[rtmpdump] [PATCH] AMF Object Callback

[Howard Chu]

Chris Larsen wrote:
>> Static global variables that might get manipulated from multiple threads
> are absolutely forbidden. Changing the global library state like this is
> forbidden. Doing
>> either of these things invites all kinds of crashes and other mysterious
> problems.
>
>> A patch that extends the RTMP structure might be acceptable. The AMF_Dump
> function is primarily a debug function, you should not abuse it this way.
>
> Good points. I moved the callback pointer to the RTMP struct as you said so
> that it's thread safe. It is initialized to NULL when RTMP_Init() is called.
> Then I moved the calls to the HandleInvoke and HandleMeta methods.
> RTMP_Close() will NULL out the pointer and I added another method that an
> app can call to explicitly release the callback. Please let me know what you
> think and thank you.

So I guess this list has become the C Programming workshop.

Except for very trivial cases, I don't see that the current approach is of 
much use. If you wanted to write a callback that intercepts a particular type 
of message and computes a reply to send back, the callback function at least 
needs to also get the RTMP * pointer as an argument. If you want to write a 
callback that accesses some other variables in the program, you at least need 
to give it a context pointer that can be set to point to a structure 
containing whatever other data it needs.

Also, if you want to intercept a particular message and then act on it, you 
probably need to be able to return a result code. I would say
	#define AMF_CB_CONTINUE	0xffff	/* continue with normal processing */
	#define AMF_CB_SUCCESS	0	/* callback did everything, stop processing */
	/* any other value: error code, stop processing */

So your prototype should look like:
	
	typedef int (AMF_ObjectCallback)(RTMP *, AMFObject *, void *);

With
	void RTMP_SetAMFCallback(RTMP *r, AMFObject *obj, void *ctx)

The other problem with all of this is that it requires the callback to 
duplicate a lot of librtmp's parsing before it can discover if it actually 
needs to do anything.

So again, the question is - what good is this? How do you actually expect to 
be able to use this feature? Give an actual example, one that would actually 
work, given what you've proposed.