How to properly parse multipart/byteranges responses using typescript/javascript?

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I'm new to TypeScript/JavaScript and I'm trying to do multipart range requests (RFC 7233) for different parts of a binary file, using TypeScript and XMLHttpRequest 2.

According to RFC 7233, a multipart/byteranges response has the following:

 HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
 Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
 Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT
 Content-Length: 1741
 Content-Type: multipart/byteranges; boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES

 --THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
 Content-Type: application/pdf
 Content-Range: bytes 500-999/8000

 ...the first range...
 --THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
 Content-Type: application/pdf
 Content-Range: bytes 7000-7999/8000

 ...the second range
 --THIS_STRING_SEPARATES--

I see two options:

  1. Treat the body of the response as binary data array (set XMLHttpRequest.responseType = "arraybuffer"), convert the boundary string into binary, search in the binary data array for each body part delimited by the boundary-string-converted-to-binary, extract the headers for each payload and converted them to string? or,
  2. Similar to above, but treat the body as a string (set XMLHttpRequest.responseType = "text"), identify the body parts delimited by the boundary-string, and convert the payloads to binary data arrays?

What is the proper way to handle/parse such responses in javascript/typescript, since the response contains multiple body parts, each with its own headers (string) and payload (binary)?

Is there a simpler way?

Any suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!

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I'm not even sure how you'd do it using an "arraybuffer" response type, but I've used this before to parse multipart/byteranges responses:

function parseMultipartBody (body, boundary) {
  return body.split(`--${boundary}`).reduce((parts, part) => {
    if (part && part !== '--') {
      const [ head, body ] = part.trim().split(/\r\n\r\n/g)
      parts.push({
        body: body,
        headers: head.split(/\r\n/g).reduce((headers, header) => {
          const [ key, value ] = header.split(/:\s+/)
          headers[key.toLowerCase()] = value
          return headers
        }, {})
      })
    }
    return parts
  }, [])
}

And for using it with an XMLHttpRequest it'd probably look something like this:

const client = new XMLHttpRequest()
client.open('GET', 'example.pdf', true)
client.setRequestHeader('Range', 'bytes=500-999,7000-7999')
client.onreadystatechange = function() {
  if (client.readyState == 4 && client.status === 206) {
    const boundary = client.getResponseHeader('Content-Type').match(/boundary=(.+)$/i)[1]
    if (boundary) console.log('PARTS', parseMultipartBody(client.resposeText, boundary))
  }
}
client.send()

The output from your example response would look like this:

[
  {
    "body": "...the first range...",
    "headers": {
      "content-type": "application/pdf",
      "content-range": "bytes 500-999/8000"
    }
  },
  {
    "body": "...the second range",
    "headers": {
      "content-type": "application/pdf",
      "content-range": "bytes 7000-7999/8000"
    }
  }
]