Overview of the Caching Proxy API
The API is an interface to the Caching Proxy that enables you to extend the proxy server's
base functions. You can write extensions, or plug-ins, to do customized processing,
including the following examples:
- Enhancing the basic authentication routine, or replacing it with a site-specific
process.
- Adding error-handling routines to track problems or alert for serious
conditions.
- Detecting and tracking information that comes in from the requesting client,
such as server referrals and user agent codes.
The Caching Proxy API provides the following benefits:
- Efficiency
- The API is designed specifically for the threaded processing system used
by the Caching Proxy.
- Flexibility
- The API contains rich and versatile functions.
- The API is platform independent and language neutral. It runs on all Caching Proxy platforms,
and plug-in applications can be written in most of the programming languages
supported by these platforms.
- Ease of use
- Simple data types are passed by reference instead of by value (for example,
long *, char *).
- Each function has a fixed number of parameters.
- Includes bindings for the C language.
- Plug-ins do not impact allocated memory; plug-in applications allocate
and free memory independently of other Caching Proxy processes.