TSHTTPCONNECTPLUGIN(3ts)

📦
version 9.2.5 · 4 versions
, in ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing

✨ TSHTTPCONNECTPLUGIN ✨

okay bestie, welcome to TSHttpConnectPlugin — the Apache Traffic Server page that lets your plugin start an HTTP connection. this is giving main character energy fr fr 💅

so like, what it does: it lets the plugin initiate an http connection. it tags the HTTP state machine with extra data that the logging interface can go and grab later, and the extra arguments give you buffer settings used when constructing IOBuffers. the connection gets treated like an HTTP transaction, as if it came from a client. periodt. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <ts/ts.h>

TSVConn TSHttpConnectPlugin(TSHttpConnectOptions *options);

like that's literally it, she's simple, she's iconic ✨

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

this call attempts to create an HTTP state machine and a virtual connection to that state machine. and why is that so slay? because it's more efficient than using TSNetConnect() — it dodges the operating system stack via the loopback interface entirely. no cap, that's the whole point. 🦋

🫶 the argument

  • options — a TSHttpConnectOptions structure. it holds fields that give you the network address of the target, a tag that can be passed through to the HTTP state machine, a plugin ID, a buffer index and a buffer water mark. that's the whole little bundle of joy 💜

the virtual connection you get back as the TSVConn is API equivalent to a network virtual connection — both to the plugin and to internal mechanisms. so you read and write data to the connection (and from there, to the target system) by reading and writing on this virtual connection. it's giving "it's just a connection, bestie" 🌈

NOTE: this function only opens the connection. to actually drive the transaction, an actual HTTP request must be sent and the HTTP response handled. the transaction is handled as a standard HTTP transaction, and all of the standard configuration options and plugins will operate on it. so don't come crying to me when nothing happens after you just call it 😭

🌟 tag + id = the duo

the combination of tag and id is intended to enable correlation in log post processing. the tag identifies the connection as related to the plugin, and the id can be used together with plugin generated logs to correlate the log records. it's a whole matching set, obsessed. 💅

👑 NOTES 👑

the H2 implementation uses this to correlate client sessions with H2 streams. each client connection is assigned a distinct numeric identifier, and that gets passed into the TSHttpConnectPlugin() function via the member variable id in the options structure. 🔥

meanwhile the tag is selected to be the NPN string for the client session protocol, e.g. "h2". so log post processing can count:

  • the number of connections for the various supported protocols, and
  • the number of H2 virtual streams for each real client connection to Traffic Server.

iykyk 🧚

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

go read those too, they're the friend group 🌸

2026, dev@trafficserver.apache.org

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one came from Apache Traffic Server 9.2, dated Feb 12, 2026, and it's genuinely so iconic for letting a plugin spin up its own HTTP connection without dragging the OS stack into it. stay slay, stay connected, mwah 💖✨🎀🦋

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