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header_map.md

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Header map implementation overview

The Envoy header map implementation (HeaderMapImpl) has the following properties:

  • Headers are stored in a linked list (HeaderList) in the order they are added, with pseudo headers kept at the front of the list.
  • O(1) direct access is possible for common headers needed during data plane processing. This is provided by a table of pointers that reach directly into a linked list that is populated when headers are added or removed from the map. When O(1) headers are accessed by direct method (DEFINE_INLINE_HEADER and CustomInlineHeaderBase) they use direct pointer access to see whether a header is present, add it, modify it, etc. When headers are added by name a trie is used to lookup the pointer in the table (StaticLookupTable).
  • Custom headers can be registered statically against a specific implementation (request headers, request trailers, response headers, and response trailers) via core code and extensions (CustomInlineHeaderRegistry). Each registered header increases the size of the table by the size of a single pointer.
  • Operations that search, replace, etc. for a header by name that is not one of the O(1) headers will incur an O(N) search through the linked list. This is an implementation deficiency for certain usage patterns that will be improved in future changes.

Implementation details

  • O(1) registered headers are tracked during static initialization via the CustomInlineHeaderBase class.
  • The first time a header map is constructed (in practice this is after bootstrap load and the Envoy header prefix is finalized when getAllHeaderMapImplInfo is called), the StaticLookupTable is finalized for each header map type. No further changes are possible after this point. The StaticLookupTable defines the amount of variable pointer table space that is require for each header map type.
  • Each concrete header map type derives from InlineStorage with a variable length member at the end of the definition.
  • Each concrete header map type uses a factory function and a provide constructor. The required size is determined via the inlineHeadersSize function.