cross-platform HttpClient

[robinheghan]

gren-lang/node and gren-lang/browser have seperate HttpClient API's. Since Node.js supports fetch, it should be possible to write a single HttpClient that can be shared between all supported platforms.

A good first step would be to rewrite the HttpClient in gren-lang/node to be based on fetch with built-in support for Stream.

After that we can figure out how to make it work in the browser.

[Warry]

fetch works the same way in the browser, node, deno, cloudflare workers, bun... It's kind of a silver bullet.

The ServiceWorker api (from the browser) is being widely adopted by serverless providers, first by Cloudflare, then Deno and many others... It is pushing fetch on the entire stack.

export default {
  async fetch(request, env, ctx) {
    return new Response("Hello World!");
  },
};

Anyhow, I didn't know if those things were on your radar or not, but this is loosely related to the TC55 (https://wintertc.org/) which is a specification committee that defines some sort of "minimal API" for runtimes (Deno, Cloudflare, Node...), including: CLI, Crypto, Fetch, Sockets, LocalStorage, etc...

I'd be super happy to help on this topic !

[edit]: actually, the code is not the ServiceWorker api, but the new ES module api pushed by the tc55.

[robinheghan]

@Warry Yes, we have the same impression of fetch.

We currently don't have the resources to pursue this, though. If you want to take a stab at implementing it, then I'll be happy to guide you through the process. Just reach out to me on discord, and we can take it from there.