[tor-bugs] #8050 [Stem]: Stem's DescriptorReader should provide an option to provide statuses vs. status entries

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#8050: Stem's DescriptorReader should provide an option to provide statuses vs.
status entries
-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  karsten      |          Owner:  atagar
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  new   
 Priority:  normal       |      Milestone:        
Component:  Stem         |        Version:        
 Keywords:               |         Parent:        
   Points:               |   Actualpoints:        
-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
 When I pass a tarball of consensuses to Stem's DescriptorReader, it gives
 me an iterator over status entries, though I'd expect an iterator over
 statuses.  I see the advantages of returning status entries rather than
 waiting until a full status is parsed.  But for most use cases I'm
 interested in, I want the status and then maybe look into status entries.

 For example, I might want to extract supported consensus versions or
 bandwidth weights over time; no need to look into status entries for that.
 The alternative, to iterate over status entries and look at every
 referenced status document to see if I saw that before or not, seems
 complicated.  It probably doesn't even work for bandwidth weights which
 are parsed after the status entries.

 Can we have a parameter in DescriptorReader to specify whether it should
 provide top-level documents or subdocuments?  I'd even argue that top-
 level documents should be the default, because the DescriptorReader will
 mostly be used for batch processing where latency and memory consumption
 are not an issue.  But I can see how changing the default might make other
 people unhappy.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8050>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online