this new class uses the newly introduced HttpRequestConfig and performs
HTTP requests using this config. it will be reused for other power
meters (SML over HTTP(S)) and may be reused by other features in the
future (battery provider, solar power provider, etc.).
the extractUrlComponents method did extract username and password
from the URL and encoded it for basic authentication. however, the
respective result string was never used. we only perform basic
authentication if the auth type is "basic" and if username and
password were supplied through the respective inputs.
the parameters to peform an HTTP request by the HTTP(S)+JSON power meter
have been generalized by introducing a new config struct. this is now
used for all values which the HTTP(S)+JSON power meter can retrieve, and
also used by the HTTP+SML power meter implementation. we anticipate that
other feature will use this config as well.
generalizing also allows to share serialization and deserialization
methods in the configuration handler and the web API handler, leading to
de-duplication of code and reduced flash memory usage.
a new web UI component is implemented to manage a set of HTTP request
settings.
it is important to separate the capabilities of each power meter
provider into their own class/source file, as the providers work
fundamentally different and their implementations must not be
intermangled, which made maintenance and improvements a nightmare
in the past.
