net/http: add DialTLSContext to Transport

[rosenhouse]

I see that http.Transport has the following fields:

• Dial (deprecated)
• DialContext
• DialTLS

I'd like to have a DialTLSContext

Would the maintainers be open to a contribution of this feature to http.Transport?

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

1.8

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

linux & mac on amd64

What did you do?

I want to set the DialTLS behavior but have access to the Context of the http Request inside that function, e.g.

func main() {
	tr := http.Transport{
		DialTLSContext: func(ctx context.Context, network, addr string) (net.Conn, err) {
			conn, err := tls.Dial(network, addr, myConfig)
			if err != nil {
				return nil, err
			}
			connState := conn.ConnectionState()
			ok := extraValidation(connState, ctx)
			if !ok {
				return nil, errors.New("extra validation failed")
			}
			return conn
		},
	}
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://example.com", nil)
	tr.RoundTrip(req)
}

What did you expect to see?

the RoundTrip function should behave the same way as if I'd set the DialTLS function, while providing the context.Context to my custom validation function.

What did you see instead?

unknown field 'DialTLSContext' in struct literal of type http.Transport

Reference: related question on golang-nuts

[rsc]

/cc @bradfitz

[rosenhouse]

some code: https://go-review.googlesource.com/61291

[gopherbot]

Change https://golang.org/cl/61291 mentions this issue: net/http: add DialTLSContext hook to Transport

[sabey]

I'm trying to accomplish something similar to this proposed change and add a DialTLSContext to Transport. I assume your changes only work for http/1.0 requests? similar changes would have to be added to the http2 transport?

[usirsiwal]

We have a very similar need. We are developing a proxy in go and will like the upstream TLS connection to be canceled when the client connection is closed.

[rsc]

/cc @bradfitz

[bradfitz]

I suppose we could, but we already have so many dial hooks there. I guess one more won't kill us.

But I'll also note that tls.Conn has no context support during its Handshake, so the context isn't as useful as it could be. We could fake it with some net.Conn.SetDeadline calls, but the net.Conn interface has no way to get the old read/write deadlines, so we can't restore the deadlines to whatever they might've been either.

/cc @FiloSottile

[rsc]

It's unclear what this is useful for, since TLS doesn't support context enough. What does extraValidation do in your example? Where does the context come from?

[sabey]

@bradfitz @rsc One of my use cases is that I am using InsecureSkipVerify = false so that after the Handshake I can implement my own VerifyPeerCertificate with the connection context. That might be similar to what @rosenhouse is doing.

However, my main use case and what I believe the real problem is is that I am implementing my own underlying Dial functionality and I am unable provide context to it when the HTTP Client uses DialTLS.

This probably isn't the proper go way of doing things?, but I personally use it and wouldn't mind the added context if possible since there is a DialContext function.

edit Thinking about this some more, I think it is the right choice especially if you are using Transport and DisableKeepAlives = false - It would then make more sense for each connection to then have their own context instead of worrying about different requests sharing an unknown context.

[rosenhouse]

Yeah, our use case sounds like @sabey's

The http client would make a request with some extra data attached to its context. The http transport's DialTLSContext callback could use that data to further validate the server certificate.

This wasn't illustrated very well in the original post. Let me try again...

tr := http.Transport{
  DialTLSContext: func(ctx context.Context, network, addr string) (net.Conn, err) {
    conn, err := tls.Dial(network, addr, myConfig)
    if err != nil {
      return nil, err
    }
    if !validation.Check(ctx, conn.ConnectionState()) {
      return nil, errors.New("extra validation failed")
    }
    return conn, nil
  },
}
req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://example.com", nil)
req = req.WithContext(validation.NewContext(req.Context(), expectedCertData))
tr.RoundTrip(req)

Then validation.Check would compare the server certificate in the connection state with the expectedCertData attached to the request.

[rsc]

Per discussions with @bradfitz and proposal review, we don't think this is terribly useful by itself, but it does seem like maybe having only 3 of the 4 combinations is odd. Someone can look into doing this. If it ends up causing a lot of pain, though, we might rethink. But for now, accepted.

[rosenhouse]

we don't think this is terribly useful by itself

@rsc could you elaborate? Are there other changes necessary to address the described use case?

[hanbang-wang]

Any follow-up? I come across the need for this function now, and it is strange to see that we have deprecated Dial but no deprecated DialTLS. My current works-all-fine solution is to manually patch the src file, but it would be great to see this 2017-issue to be fixed in early 2019.

[juliandroid]

Is there a workaround of this issue? I.e. to use context that can be canceled and still do a https requests?

[quite]

As somehow who ran across the need for this (the peer verification use-case), DialTLSContext() would indeed make the API feel more complete :) The patch is getting stale, and a rebase on master is slowly becoming more and more involved... Are you up for it @rosenhouse ?

[rosenhouse]

Sorry but I don't have the bandwidth at the moment. Someone else want to run with it?