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Draft Networking

WalkLang networking is draft-only. It is implemented for native CLI experiments, not as part of the stable feature set.

Scope

The current draft http module includes:

imp: http

var: response = http.get('http://127.0.0.1:8080/health')
out: response.ok
out: response.status
out: response.body
out: response.error
http.get(url) -> HttpResult
http.post(url, body) -> HttpResult
http.request(method, url, body) -> HttpResult

HttpResult is:

struct: HttpResult
    ok bool
    status int
    body string
    error string

Runtime Backend

The C backend keeps release builds portable by delegating draft HTTP requests to the system curl executable at runtime. WalkLang does not link libcurl or ship a TLS stack in generated C yet.

This is a deliberate draft dependency decision:

  • release cross-builds still need only Go and the target C toolchain
  • native HTTP programs need curl available on PATH at runtime
  • TLS behavior is owned by the host curl build and host certificate store
  • missing curl, network failures, DNS failures, TLS failures, and timeout

    • failures return HttpResult data instead of runtime-stopping

Security Policy

Draft HTTP uses argv-style process execution. It does not invoke a shell.

Default policy:

  • redirects are followed
  • timeout is 10 seconds
  • response bodies are capped at 1 MiB by the runtime request command
  • response bodies are UTF-8 text only
  • status codes 200 through 399 set ok true
  • other status codes set ok false, preserve body, and set

    • error 'http status'

  • empty method or URL returns a recoverable error before any process spawn

Not included yet:

  • custom headers
  • cookies or a cookie jar
  • authentication helpers
  • streaming responses
  • binary bodies
  • server APIs
  • async/event-loop APIs

Testing Policy

Network tests must not depend on public network availability. Compiler/runtime tests use local loopback HTTP servers and skip only when the draft runtime backend dependency, curl, is unavailable. The systems compiler runtime-module conformance fixture also covers deterministic HTTP failure result data for empty method and empty URL inputs through the active C++/C walk compiler.