How to Implement Partial Content Serving in Go HTTP Responses?

Serving Partial Content in HTTP Responses with Go

Serving partial content in HTTP responses allows clients to request specific ranges of a file. This is useful for handling media playback, where clients may only need to download portions of the file for seeking or looping purposes.

How to Serve Partial Content

To serve partial content using the http package in Go, you can use the ServeContent or ServeFile functions.

• Using ServeFile: If you're serving files directly from the filesystem, you can use http.ServeFile:

  http.HandleFunc("/file", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    http.ServeFile(w, r, "my-file.mp3")
  })

• Using ServeContent: If you're serving content from a buffer or a stream, you can use http.ServeContent:

  func handleContent(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    content := getMyContent()
    http.ServeContent(w, r, "my-file.mp3", time.Now(), bytes.NewReader(content))
  }

Both ServeFile and ServeContent handle range requests and set the appropriate content headers for partial content.

Implementing Partial Content Yourself

While the http package provides easy-to-use functions for serving partial content, you may need to implement it yourself in certain scenarios. Here's a brief overview:

1. Handle range requests in your response handler.
2. If a range is specified, seek to the requested offset in your content source.
3. Read the requested bytes from your content source and write them to the response writer.

Implementing partial content serving yourself requires careful handling of status codes, request headers, and seeking in the content source.

Byte Serving and io.ReadSeeker

Byte serving is the underlying mechanism for serving partial content. It allows clients to request specific ranges of a file. To implement byte serving, your content must be represented as an io.ReadSeeker, an interface that provides methods for reading and seeking within a stream.

You can use the bytes.Reader type to represent your content as an io.ReadSeeker. The bytes.Reader can be initialized from a slice of bytes or any io.Reader implementation.

By creating an io.ReadSeeker view of your content, you can control how and when data is read from the content source, enabling you to handle range requests and serve partial content effectively.

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