# Design of vcr

This section explains `vcr`’s internal design and architecture.

### How vcr works

The steps:

1. Use either `vcr::use_cassette()` or `vcr::local_cassette()`

1. If you use `vcr::local_cassette()`, make sure to run `vcr::eject_cassette()` when you’re done to stop recording

2. When you first run a request with `vcr` there’s no cached data to use, so we allow HTTP requests until your request is done.
3. The real HTTP request is made and we record a response in memory (not written to disk).
4. We then disallow HTTP requests so that if the request is done again we use the cached response.
5. The last thing we do is write the HTTP interaction to disk in a mostly human readable form.

When you run that request again using `vcr::use_cassette()` or `vcr::local_cassette()`:

- We attempt to match the request to cached requests, and since we stubbed the request the first time we used the cached response.

Of course if you do a different request, even slightly (but depending on which matching format you decided to use), then the request will have no matching stub and no cached response, and then a real HTTP request is done - we then cache it, then subsequent requests will pull from that cached response.

You can use any of the three HTTP R clients: `crul`, `httr` and `httr2`.

The main use case we are going for in `vcr` is to deal with real HTTP requests and responses, so we allow real HTTP requests when we need to, and turn it off when we don’t.

### Where vcr comes from

`vcr` was “ported” from the Ruby gem (aka, library) of the same name1. Because it was ported from Ruby, an object-oriented programming language I thought it would be easier to use an object system in R that most closely resemble that used in Ruby (at least in my opinion). This thinking lead to choosing R6. Since v2 we’ve mostly removed use of R6 throughout the package.

### Principles

#### An easy to use interface hides complexity

As described above, `vcr` uses some R6 internally, but users interact with normal R functions.

#### Hooks into HTTP clients

Perhaps the most fundamental thing about that this package work is how it knows what HTTP requests are being made. This stumped me for quite a long time. When looking at Ruby vcr, at first I thought it must be “listening” for HTTP requests somehow. Then I found out about monkey patching; that’s how it’s achieved in Ruby. That is, the Ruby vcr package literally overrides certain methods in Ruby HTTP clients, hijacking internals of the HTTP clients.

However, monkey patching is not allowed in R. Thus, in R we have to somehow have “hooks” into HTTP clients in R. Fortunately, Scott is the maintainer of one of the HTTP clients, `crul`, so was able to quickly create a hook. Fortunately, there was already a hook mechanism in the `httr` and `httr2` packages.

### Internal classes

An overview of some of the more important aspects of vcr.

#### Configuration

An internal object (`the`) is created when `vcr` is loaded with the default vcr configuration options in a list. This class keeps track of default and user specified configuration options. You can access `the` using triple namespace `:::`, though it is not intended for general use. Whenever you make calls to `vcr_configure()` or other configuration functions, `the` is affected.

#### Cassette class

`Cassette` is an R6 class that handles internals/state for each cassette. Each time you run `use_cassette()`/`local_cassette()` this class is used. The class has quite a few methods in it, so there’s a lot going on in the class. Ideally the class would be separated into subclasses to handle similar sets of logic, but there’s not an easy way to do that with R6.

#### How HTTP requests are handled

`RequestHandler` and it’s child classes `RequestHandlerCrul`, `RequestHandlerHttr` and `RequestHandlerHttr2`, handle the logic for for `crul`, `httr` and `httr2`, respectively. These classes determine what to do with each HTTP request. The options for each HTTP request include:

- Ignored You can ignore HTTP requests under certain rules using the configuration options `ignore_hosts` and `ignore_localhost`
- Stubbed by vcr This is an HTTP request for which a match is found in the cassette defined in the `use_cassette()`/`insert_cassette()` call. In this case the matching request/response from the cassette is returned with no real HTTP request allowed.
- Recordable This is an HTTP request for which no match is found in the cassette defined in the `use_cassette()`/`insert_cassette()` call. In this case a real HTTP request is allowed, and the request/response is recorded to the cassette.
- Unhandled If none of the above are triggered, you’ll get a hopefully helpful error message.

#### Serializers

Serializers handle in what format cassettes are written to files on disk. The current options are YAML (default), JSON, and QS2. YAML was implemented first in `vcr` because that’s the default option in Ruby vcr.

An R6 class `Serializer` is the parent class for all serializer types; `YAML`, `JSON`, and `QS2` are all R6 classes that inherit from `Serializer`. All `YAML`, `JSON`, and `QS2` define just two methods: `serialize()` and `deserialize()` for converting R structures to yaml, json, or qs2, and converting yaml, json, or qs2 back to R structures, respectively.

1. The first version of Ruby’s vcr was released in February 2010 https://rubygems.org/gems/vcr/versions/0.1.0. Ruby vcr source code: https://github.com/vcr/vcr/↩︎