HTTP backends

Wuwe exposes one http_client interface for provider clients, embeddings, remote indexes, and MCP HTTP integration.

Implementations

Backend	Role	HTTPS
cpr_http_client	Default backend, built on cpr/libcurl	Schannel on the default Windows profile; OpenSSL on Linux and OpenSSL builds
httplib_http_client	Alternate cpp-httplib implementation	Requires an OpenSSL-enabled build and WUWE_ENABLE_HTTPLIB_SSL=ON

Select the default implementation at configure time:

cmake --preset windows-vcpkg -DWUWE_HTTP_BACKEND=cpr
cmake --preset windows-vcpkg -DWUWE_HTTP_BACKEND=httplib

Both implementations are public classes; default_http_client uses the backend selected for the build.

Common request model

wuwe::http_request request {
  .method = "GET",
  .url = "https://example.com/data",
  .headers = { { "Accept", "application/json" } },
  .timeouts = {
    .total_ms = 30000,
    .connect_ms = 5000,
  },
  .follow_redirects = true,
  .trace_id = "request-42",
};

wuwe::default_http_client client;
const auto response = client.send(request);

http_request supports headers, body, redirects, proxy credentials, TLS verification and custom CA paths, total/connect/read/write timeouts, and a trace ID. http_response returns normalized errors, transport errors, status, headers, and body.

send_stream() delivers response chunks through a callback and accepts a std::stop_token. Returning false from the callback cancels the transfer.

TLS rules

• The standard Windows package uses Schannel and the Windows certificate store.
• The Linux release package links OpenSSL.
• cpp-httplib HTTPS is available only when OpenSSL was linked.
• Disabling peer or host verification is an explicit per-request choice and should be limited to controlled development environments.

See Dependencies for build options and installed-package requirements.

Verification

CI builds and tests both HTTP backend selections on Windows. The Linux release job verifies the OpenSSL profile. Network-independent tests cover requests, redirects, proxying, streaming, cancellation, error classification, headers, and TLS behavior where available.