[Docs] [txt|pdf|xml|html] [Tracker] [WG] [Email] [Diff1] [Diff2] [Nits]
Versions: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
HTTPbis Working Group R. Fielding, Ed.
Internet-Draft Day Software
Obsoletes: 2616 (if approved) J. Gettys
Intended status: Standards Track One Laptop per Child
Expires: September 9, 2010 J. Mogul
HP
H. Frystyk
Microsoft
L. Masinter
Adobe Systems
P. Leach
Microsoft
T. Berners-Lee
W3C/MIT
Y. Lafon, Ed.
W3C
J. Reschke, Ed.
greenbytes
March 8, 2010
HTTP/1.1, part 3: Message Payload and Content Negotiation
draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-09
Abstract
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level
protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information
systems. HTTP has been in use by the World Wide Web global
information initiative since 1990. This document is Part 3 of the
seven-part specification that defines the protocol referred to as
"HTTP/1.1" and, taken together, obsoletes RFC 2616. Part 3 defines
HTTP message content, metadata, and content negotiation.
Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor)
Discussion of this draft should take place on the HTTPBIS working
group mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org). The current issues list is
at <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/report/11> and related
documents (including fancy diffs) can be found at
<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/>.
The changes in this draft are summarized in Appendix E.10.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on September 9, 2010.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the BSD License.
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published or made publicly available before November
10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
than English.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3. Syntax Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.1. Core Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.2. ABNF Rules defined in other Parts of the
Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Protocol Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1. Character Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.1. Missing Charset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2. Content Codings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.1. Content Coding Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3. Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3.1. Canonicalization and Text Defaults . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.2. Multipart Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4. Language Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3. Entity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.1. Entity Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2. Entity Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.1. Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.2. Entity Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4. Content Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1. Server-driven Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2. Agent-driven Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5. Header Field Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.1. Accept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2. Accept-Charset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.3. Accept-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.4. Accept-Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.5. Content-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.6. Content-Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.7. Content-Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.8. Content-MD5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.9. Content-Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.1. Message Header Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.2. Content Coding Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
7.1. Privacy Issues Connected to Accept Headers . . . . . . . . 27
7.2. Content-Disposition Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Appendix A. Differences Between HTTP Entities and RFC 2045
Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
A.1. MIME-Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
A.2. Conversion to Canonical Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
A.3. Conversion of Date Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
A.4. Introduction of Content-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
A.5. No Content-Transfer-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
A.6. Introduction of Transfer-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
A.7. MHTML and Line Length Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Appendix B. Additional Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
B.1. Content-Disposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Appendix C. Compatibility with Previous Versions . . . . . . . . 35
C.1. Changes from RFC 2068 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
C.2. Changes from RFC 2616 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Appendix D. Collected ABNF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Appendix E. Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before
publication) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
E.1. Since RFC2616 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
E.2. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-00 . . . . . . . . . . 38
E.3. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-01 . . . . . . . . . . 39
E.4. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-02 . . . . . . . . . . 39
E.5. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-03 . . . . . . . . . . 39
E.6. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-04 . . . . . . . . . . 40
E.7. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-05 . . . . . . . . . . 40
E.8. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-06 . . . . . . . . . . 40
E.9. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-07 . . . . . . . . . . 41
E.10. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-08 . . . . . . . . . . 41
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
1. Introduction
This document defines HTTP/1.1 message payloads (a.k.a., content),
the associated metadata header fields that define how the payload is
intended to be interpreted by a recipient, the request header fields
that may influence content selection, and the various selection
algorithms that are collectively referred to as HTTP content
negotiation.
This document is currently disorganized in order to minimize the
changes between drafts and enable reviewers to see the smaller errata
changes. The next draft will reorganize the sections to better
reflect the content. In particular, the sections on entities will be
renamed payload and moved to the first half of the document, while
the sections on content negotiation and associated request header
fields will be moved to the second half. The current mess reflects
how widely dispersed these topics and associated requirements had
become in [RFC2616].
1.1. Terminology
This specification uses a number of terms to refer to the roles
played by participants in, and objects of, the HTTP communication.
content negotiation
The mechanism for selecting the appropriate representation when
servicing a request. The representation of entities in any
response can be negotiated (including error responses).
entity
The information transferred as the payload of a request or
response. An entity consists of metadata in the form of entity-
header fields and content in the form of an entity-body.
representation
An entity included with a response that is subject to content
negotiation. There may exist multiple representations associated
with a particular response status.
variant
A resource may have one, or more than one, representation(s)
associated with it at any given instant. Each of these
representations is termed a "variant". Use of the term "variant"
does not necessarily imply that the resource is subject to content
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
negotiation.
1.2. Requirements
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
An implementation is not compliant if it fails to satisfy one or more
of the MUST or REQUIRED level requirements for the protocols it
implements. An implementation that satisfies all the MUST or
REQUIRED level and all the SHOULD level requirements for its
protocols is said to be "unconditionally compliant"; one that
satisfies all the MUST level requirements but not all the SHOULD
level requirements for its protocols is said to be "conditionally
compliant."
1.3. Syntax Notation
This specification uses the ABNF syntax defined in Section 1.2 of
[Part1] (which extends the syntax defined in [RFC5234] with a list
rule). Appendix D shows the collected ABNF, with the list rule
expanded.
The following core rules are included by reference, as defined in
[RFC5234], Appendix B.1: ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return), CRLF
(CR LF), CTL (controls), DIGIT (decimal 0-9), DQUOTE (double quote),
HEXDIG (hexadecimal 0-9/A-F/a-f), LF (line feed), OCTET (any 8-bit
sequence of data), SP (space), VCHAR (any visible USASCII character),
and WSP (whitespace).
1.3.1. Core Rules
The core rules below are defined in Section 1.2.2 of [Part1]:
quoted-string = <quoted-string, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
token = <token, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
OWS = <OWS, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
1.3.2. ABNF Rules defined in other Parts of the Specification
The ABNF rules below are defined in other parts:
absolute-URI = <absolute-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
Content-Length = <Content-Length, defined in [Part1], Section 9.2>
header-field = <header-field, defined in [Part1], Section 3.2>
partial-URI = <partial-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
qvalue = <qvalue, defined in [Part1], Section 6.4>
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Last-Modified = <Last-Modified, defined in [Part4], Section 6.6>
Content-Range = <Content-Range, defined in [Part5], Section 5.2>
Expires = <Expires, defined in [Part6], Section 3.3>
2. Protocol Parameters
2.1. Character Sets
HTTP uses the same definition of the term "character set" as that
described for MIME:
The term "character set" is used in this document to refer to a
method used with one or more tables to convert a sequence of octets
into a sequence of characters. Note that unconditional conversion in
the other direction is not required, in that not all characters may
be available in a given character set and a character set may provide
more than one sequence of octets to represent a particular character.
This definition is intended to allow various kinds of character
encoding, from simple single-table mappings such as US-ASCII to
complex table switching methods such as those that use ISO-2022's
techniques. However, the definition associated with a MIME character
set name MUST fully specify the mapping to be performed from octets
to characters. In particular, use of external profiling information
to determine the exact mapping is not permitted.
Note: This use of the term "character set" is more commonly
referred to as a "character encoding." However, since HTTP and
MIME share the same registry, it is important that the terminology
also be shared.
HTTP character sets are identified by case-insensitive tokens. The
complete set of tokens is defined by the IANA Character Set registry
(<http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets>).
charset = token
Although HTTP allows an arbitrary token to be used as a charset
value, any token that has a predefined value within the IANA
Character Set registry MUST represent the character set defined by
that registry. Applications SHOULD limit their use of character sets
to those defined by the IANA registry.
HTTP uses charset in two contexts: within an Accept-Charset request
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
header (in which the charset value is an unquoted token) and as the
value of a parameter in a Content-Type header (within a request or
response), in which case the parameter value of the charset parameter
may be quoted.
Implementors should be aware of IETF character set requirements
[RFC3629] [RFC2277].
2.1.1. Missing Charset
Some HTTP/1.0 software has interpreted a Content-Type header without
charset parameter incorrectly to mean "recipient should guess."
Senders wishing to defeat this behavior MAY include a charset
parameter even when the charset is ISO-8859-1 ([ISO-8859-1]) and
SHOULD do so when it is known that it will not confuse the recipient.
Unfortunately, some older HTTP/1.0 clients did not deal properly with
an explicit charset parameter. HTTP/1.1 recipients MUST respect the
charset label provided by the sender; and those user agents that have
a provision to "guess" a charset MUST use the charset from the
content-type field if they support that charset, rather than the
recipient's preference, when initially displaying a document. See
Section 2.3.1.
2.2. Content Codings
Content coding values indicate an encoding transformation that has
been or can be applied to an entity. Content codings are primarily
used to allow a document to be compressed or otherwise usefully
transformed without losing the identity of its underlying media type
and without loss of information. Frequently, the entity is stored in
coded form, transmitted directly, and only decoded by the recipient.
content-coding = token
All content-coding values are case-insensitive. HTTP/1.1 uses
content-coding values in the Accept-Encoding (Section 5.3) and
Content-Encoding (Section 5.5) header fields. Although the value
describes the content-coding, what is more important is that it
indicates what decoding mechanism will be required to remove the
encoding.
compress
See Section 6.2.2.1 of [Part1].
deflate
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
See Section 6.2.2.2 of [Part1].
gzip
See Section 6.2.2.3 of [Part1].
identity
The default (identity) encoding; the use of no transformation
whatsoever. This content-coding is used only in the Accept-
Encoding header, and SHOULD NOT be used in the Content-Encoding
header.
2.2.1. Content Coding Registry
The HTTP Content Coding Registry defines the name space for the
content coding names.
Registrations MUST include the following fields:
o Name
o Description
o Pointer to specification text
Values to be added to this name space require expert review and a
specification (see "Expert Review" and "Specification Required" in
Section 4.1 of [RFC5226]), and MUST conform to the purpose of content
coding defined in this section.
The registry itself is maintained at
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters>.
2.3. Media Types
HTTP uses Internet Media Types [RFC2046] in the Content-Type
(Section 5.9) and Accept (Section 5.1) header fields in order to
provide open and extensible data typing and type negotiation.
media-type = type "/" subtype *( OWS ";" OWS parameter )
type = token
subtype = token
Parameters MAY follow the type/subtype in the form of attribute/value
pairs.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
parameter = attribute "=" value
attribute = token
value = token / quoted-string
The type, subtype, and parameter attribute names are case-
insensitive. Parameter values might or might not be case-sensitive,
depending on the semantics of the parameter name. The presence or
absence of a parameter might be significant to the processing of a
media-type, depending on its definition within the media type
registry.
A parameter value that matches the token production may be
transmitted as either a token or within a quoted-string. The quoted
and unquoted values are equivalent.
Note that some older HTTP applications do not recognize media type
parameters. When sending data to older HTTP applications,
implementations SHOULD only use media type parameters when they are
required by that type/subtype definition.
Media-type values are registered with the Internet Assigned Number
Authority (IANA). The media type registration process is outlined in
[RFC4288]. Use of non-registered media types is discouraged.
2.3.1. Canonicalization and Text Defaults
Internet media types are registered with a canonical form. An
entity-body transferred via HTTP messages MUST be represented in the
appropriate canonical form prior to its transmission except for
"text" types, as defined in the next paragraph.
When in canonical form, media subtypes of the "text" type use CRLF as
the text line break. HTTP relaxes this requirement and allows the
transport of text media with plain CR or LF alone representing a line
break when it is done consistently for an entire entity-body. HTTP
applications MUST accept CRLF, bare CR, and bare LF as being
representative of a line break in text media received via HTTP. In
addition, if the text is represented in a character set that does not
use octets 13 and 10 for CR and LF respectively, as is the case for
some multi-byte character sets, HTTP allows the use of whatever octet
sequences are defined by that character set to represent the
equivalent of CR and LF for line breaks. This flexibility regarding
line breaks applies only to text media in the entity-body; a bare CR
or LF MUST NOT be substituted for CRLF within any of the HTTP control
structures (such as header fields and multipart boundaries).
If an entity-body is encoded with a content-coding, the underlying
data MUST be in a form defined above prior to being encoded.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
The "charset" parameter is used with some media types to define the
character set (Section 2.1) of the data. When no explicit charset
parameter is provided by the sender, media subtypes of the "text"
type are defined to have a default charset value of "ISO-8859-1" when
received via HTTP. Data in character sets other than "ISO-8859-1" or
its subsets MUST be labeled with an appropriate charset value. See
Section 2.1.1 for compatibility problems.
2.3.2. Multipart Types
MIME provides for a number of "multipart" types -- encapsulations of
one or more entities within a single message-body. All multipart
types share a common syntax, as defined in Section 5.1.1 of
[RFC2046], and MUST include a boundary parameter as part of the media
type value. The message body is itself a protocol element and MUST
therefore use only CRLF to represent line breaks between body-parts.
Unlike in RFC 2046, the epilogue of any multipart message MUST be
empty; HTTP applications MUST NOT transmit the epilogue (even if the
original multipart contains an epilogue). These restrictions exist
in order to preserve the self-delimiting nature of a multipart
message-body, wherein the "end" of the message-body is indicated by
the ending multipart boundary.
In general, HTTP treats a multipart message-body no differently than
any other media type: strictly as payload. The one exception is the
"multipart/byteranges" type (Appendix A of [Part5]) when it appears
in a 206 (Partial Content) response. In all other cases, an HTTP
user agent SHOULD follow the same or similar behavior as a MIME user
agent would upon receipt of a multipart type. The MIME header fields
within each body-part of a multipart message-body do not have any
significance to HTTP beyond that defined by their MIME semantics.
In general, an HTTP user agent SHOULD follow the same or similar
behavior as a MIME user agent would upon receipt of a multipart type.
If an application receives an unrecognized multipart subtype, the
application MUST treat it as being equivalent to "multipart/mixed".
Note: The "multipart/form-data" type has been specifically defined
for carrying form data suitable for processing via the POST
request method, as described in [RFC2388].
2.4. Language Tags
A language tag, as defined in [RFC5646], identifies a natural
language spoken, written, or otherwise conveyed by human beings for
communication of information to other human beings. Computer
languages are explicitly excluded. HTTP uses language tags within
the Accept-Language and Content-Language fields.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
In summary, a language tag is composed of one or more parts: A
primary language subtag followed by a possibly empty series of
subtags:
language-tag = <Language-Tag, defined in [RFC5646], Section 2.1>
White space is not allowed within the tag and all tags are case-
insensitive. The name space of language subtags is administered by
the IANA (see
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry>).
Example tags include:
en, en-US, es-419, az-Arab, x-pig-latin, man-Nkoo-GN
See [RFC5646] for further information.
3. Entity
Request and Response messages MAY transfer an entity if not otherwise
restricted by the request method or response status code. An entity
consists of entity-header fields and an entity-body, although some
responses will only include the entity-headers.
In this section, both sender and recipient refer to either the client
or the server, depending on who sends and who receives the entity.
3.1. Entity Header Fields
Entity-header fields define metainformation about the entity-body or,
if no body is present, about the resource identified by the request.
entity-header = Content-Encoding ; Section 5.5
/ Content-Language ; Section 5.6
/ Content-Length ; [Part1], Section 9.2
/ Content-Location ; Section 5.7
/ Content-MD5 ; Section 5.8
/ Content-Range ; [Part5], Section 5.2
/ Content-Type ; Section 5.9
/ Expires ; [Part6], Section 3.3
/ Last-Modified ; [Part4], Section 6.6
/ extension-header
extension-header = header-field
The extension-header mechanism allows additional entity-header fields
to be defined without changing the protocol, but these fields cannot
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
be assumed to be recognizable by the recipient. Unrecognized header
fields SHOULD be ignored by the recipient and MUST be forwarded by
transparent proxies.
3.2. Entity Body
The entity-body (if any) sent with an HTTP request or response is in
a format and encoding defined by the entity-header fields.
entity-body = *OCTET
An entity-body is only present in a message when a message-body is
present, as described in Section 3.3 of [Part1]. The entity-body is
obtained from the message-body by decoding any Transfer-Encoding that
might have been applied to ensure safe and proper transfer of the
message.
3.2.1. Type
When an entity-body is included with a message, the data type of that
body is determined via the header fields Content-Type and Content-
Encoding. These define a two-layer, ordered encoding model:
entity-body := Content-Encoding( Content-Type( data ) )
Content-Type specifies the media type of the underlying data. Any
HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-
Type header field defining the media type of that body, unless that
information is unknown. If the Content-Type header field is not
present, it indicates that the sender does not know the media type of
the data; recipients MAY either assume that it is "application/
octet-stream" ([RFC2046], Section 4.5.1) or examine the content to
determine its type.
Content-Encoding may be used to indicate any additional content
codings applied to the data, usually for the purpose of data
compression, that are a property of the requested resource. There is
no default encoding.
3.2.2. Entity Length
The entity-length of a message is the length of the message-body
before any transfer-codings have been applied. Section 3.4 of
[Part1] defines how the transfer-length of a message-body is
determined.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
4. Content Negotiation
HTTP responses include a representation which contains information
for interpretation, whether by a human user or for further
processing. Often, the server has different ways of representing the
same information; for example, in different formats, languages, or
using different character encodings.
HTTP clients and their users might have different or variable
capabilities, characteristics or preferences which would influence
which representation, among those available from the server, would be
best for the server to deliver. For this reason, HTTP provides
mechanisms for "content negotiation" -- a process of allowing
selection of a representation of a given resource, when more than one
is available.
This specification defines two patterns of content negotiation;
"server-driven", where the server selects the representation based
upon the client's stated preferences, and "agent-driven" negotiation,
where the server provides a list of representations for the client to
choose from, based upon their metadata. In addition, there are other
patterns: some applications use an "active content" pattern, where
the server returns active content which runs on the client and, based
on client available parameters, selects additional resources to
invoke. "Transparent Content Negotiation" ([RFC2295]) has also been
proposed.
These patterns are all widely used, and have trade-offs in
applicability and practicality. In particular, when the number of
preferences or capabilities to be expressed by a client are large
(such as when many different formats are supported by a user-agent),
server-driven negotiation becomes unwieldy, and may not be
appropriate. Conversely, when the number of representations to
choose from is very large, agent-driven negotiation may not be
appropriate.
Note that in all cases, the supplier of representations has the
responsibility for determining which representations might be
considered to be the "same information".
4.1. Server-driven Negotiation
If the selection of the best representation for a response is made by
an algorithm located at the server, it is called server-driven
negotiation. Selection is based on the available representations of
the response (the dimensions over which it can vary; e.g., language,
content-coding, etc.) and the contents of particular header fields in
the request message or on other information pertaining to the request
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
(such as the network address of the client).
Server-driven negotiation is advantageous when the algorithm for
selecting from among the available representations is difficult to
describe to the user agent, or when the server desires to send its
"best guess" to the client along with the first response (hoping to
avoid the round-trip delay of a subsequent request if the "best
guess" is good enough for the user). In order to improve the
server's guess, the user agent MAY include request header fields
(Accept, Accept-Language, Accept-Encoding, etc.) which describe its
preferences for such a response.
Server-driven negotiation has disadvantages:
1. It is impossible for the server to accurately determine what
might be "best" for any given user, since that would require
complete knowledge of both the capabilities of the user agent and
the intended use for the response (e.g., does the user want to
view it on screen or print it on paper?).
2. Having the user agent describe its capabilities in every request
can be both very inefficient (given that only a small percentage
of responses have multiple representations) and a potential
violation of the user's privacy.
3. It complicates the implementation of an origin server and the
algorithms for generating responses to a request.
4. It may limit a public cache's ability to use the same response
for multiple user's requests.
HTTP/1.1 includes the following request-header fields for enabling
server-driven negotiation through description of user agent
capabilities and user preferences: Accept (Section 5.1), Accept-
Charset (Section 5.2), Accept-Encoding (Section 5.3), Accept-Language
(Section 5.4), and User-Agent (Section 9.9 of [Part2]). However, an
origin server is not limited to these dimensions and MAY vary the
response based on any aspect of the request, including information
outside the request-header fields or within extension header fields
not defined by this specification.
Note: In practice, User-Agent based negotiation is fragile,
because new clients might not be recognized.
The Vary header field (Section 3.5 of [Part6]) can be used to express
the parameters the server uses to select a representation that is
subject to server-driven negotiation.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
4.2. Agent-driven Negotiation
With agent-driven negotiation, selection of the best representation
for a response is performed by the user agent after receiving an
initial response from the origin server. Selection is based on a
list of the available representations of the response included within
the header fields or entity-body of the initial response, with each
representation identified by its own URI. Selection from among the
representations may be performed automatically (if the user agent is
capable of doing so) or manually by the user selecting from a
generated (possibly hypertext) menu.
Agent-driven negotiation is advantageous when the response would vary
over commonly-used dimensions (such as type, language, or encoding),
when the origin server is unable to determine a user agent's
capabilities from examining the request, and generally when public
caches are used to distribute server load and reduce network usage.
Agent-driven negotiation suffers from the disadvantage of needing a
second request to obtain the best alternate representation. This
second request is only efficient when caching is used. In addition,
this specification does not define any mechanism for supporting
automatic selection, though it also does not prevent any such
mechanism from being developed as an extension and used within
HTTP/1.1.
This specification defines the 300 (Multiple Choices) and 406 (Not
Acceptable) status codes for enabling agent-driven negotiation when
the server is unwilling or unable to provide a varying response using
server-driven negotiation.
5. Header Field Definitions
This section defines the syntax and semantics of HTTP/1.1 header
fields related to the payload of messages.
For entity-header fields, both sender and recipient refer to either
the client or the server, depending on who sends and who receives the
entity.
5.1. Accept
The "Accept" request-header field can be used by user agents to
specify response media types that are acceptable. Accept headers can
be used to indicate that the request is specifically limited to a
small set of desired types, as in the case of a request for an in-
line image.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Accept = "Accept" ":" OWS Accept-v
Accept-v = #( media-range [ accept-params ] )
media-range = ( "*/*"
/ ( type "/" "*" )
/ ( type "/" subtype )
) *( OWS ";" OWS parameter )
accept-params = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue *( accept-ext )
accept-ext = OWS ";" OWS token
[ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) ]
The asterisk "*" character is used to group media types into ranges,
with "*/*" indicating all media types and "type/*" indicating all
subtypes of that type. The media-range MAY include media type
parameters that are applicable to that range.
Each media-range MAY be followed by one or more accept-params,
beginning with the "q" parameter for indicating a relative quality
factor. The first "q" parameter (if any) separates the media-range
parameter(s) from the accept-params. Quality factors allow the user
or user agent to indicate the relative degree of preference for that
media-range, using the qvalue scale from 0 to 1 (Section 6.4 of
[Part1]). The default value is q=1.
Note: Use of the "q" parameter name to separate media type
parameters from Accept extension parameters is due to historical
practice. Although this prevents any media type parameter named
"q" from being used with a media range, such an event is believed
to be unlikely given the lack of any "q" parameters in the IANA
media type registry and the rare usage of any media type
parameters in Accept. Future media types are discouraged from
registering any parameter named "q".
The example
Accept: audio/*; q=0.2, audio/basic
SHOULD be interpreted as "I prefer audio/basic, but send me any audio
type if it is the best available after an 80% mark-down in quality."
If no Accept header field is present, then it is assumed that the
client accepts all media types. If an Accept header field is
present, and if the server cannot send a response which is acceptable
according to the combined Accept field value, then the server SHOULD
send a 406 (Not Acceptable) response.
A more elaborate example is
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Accept: text/plain; q=0.5, text/html,
text/x-dvi; q=0.8, text/x-c
Verbally, this would be interpreted as "text/html and text/x-c are
the preferred media types, but if they do not exist, then send the
text/x-dvi entity, and if that does not exist, send the text/plain
entity."
Media ranges can be overridden by more specific media ranges or
specific media types. If more than one media range applies to a
given type, the most specific reference has precedence. For example,
Accept: text/*, text/html, text/html;level=1, */*
have the following precedence:
1. text/html;level=1
2. text/html
3. text/*
4. */*
The media type quality factor associated with a given type is
determined by finding the media range with the highest precedence
which matches that type. For example,
Accept: text/*;q=0.3, text/html;q=0.7, text/html;level=1,
text/html;level=2;q=0.4, */*;q=0.5
would cause the following values to be associated:
+-------------------+---------------+
| Media Type | Quality Value |
+-------------------+---------------+
| text/html;level=1 | 1 |
| text/html | 0.7 |
| text/plain | 0.3 |
| image/jpeg | 0.5 |
| text/html;level=2 | 0.4 |
| text/html;level=3 | 0.7 |
+-------------------+---------------+
Note: A user agent might be provided with a default set of quality
values for certain media ranges. However, unless the user agent is a
closed system which cannot interact with other rendering agents, this
default set ought to be configurable by the user.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
5.2. Accept-Charset
The "Accept-Charset" request-header field can be used by user agents
to indicate what response character sets are acceptable. This field
allows clients capable of understanding more comprehensive or
special-purpose character sets to signal that capability to a server
which is capable of representing documents in those character sets.
Accept-Charset = "Accept-Charset" ":" OWS
Accept-Charset-v
Accept-Charset-v = 1#( ( charset / "*" )
[ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
Character set values are described in Section 2.1. Each charset MAY
be given an associated quality value which represents the user's
preference for that charset. The default value is q=1. An example
is
Accept-Charset: iso-8859-5, unicode-1-1;q=0.8
The special value "*", if present in the Accept-Charset field,
matches every character set (including ISO-8859-1) which is not
mentioned elsewhere in the Accept-Charset field. If no "*" is
present in an Accept-Charset field, then all character sets not
explicitly mentioned get a quality value of 0, except for ISO-8859-1,
which gets a quality value of 1 if not explicitly mentioned.
If no Accept-Charset header is present, the default is that any
character set is acceptable. If an Accept-Charset header is present,
and if the server cannot send a response which is acceptable
according to the Accept-Charset header, then the server SHOULD send
an error response with the 406 (Not Acceptable) status code, though
the sending of an unacceptable response is also allowed.
5.3. Accept-Encoding
The "Accept-Encoding" request-header field can be used by user agents
to indicate what response content-codings (Section 2.2) are
acceptable in the response.
Accept-Encoding = "Accept-Encoding" ":" OWS
Accept-Encoding-v
Accept-Encoding-v =
#( codings [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
codings = ( content-coding / "*" )
Each codings value MAY be given an associated quality value which
represents the preference for that encoding. The default value is
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
q=1.
Examples of its use are:
Accept-Encoding: compress, gzip
Accept-Encoding:
Accept-Encoding: *
Accept-Encoding: compress;q=0.5, gzip;q=1.0
Accept-Encoding: gzip;q=1.0, identity; q=0.5, *;q=0
A server tests whether a content-coding is acceptable, according to
an Accept-Encoding field, using these rules:
1. If the content-coding is one of the content-codings listed in the
Accept-Encoding field, then it is acceptable, unless it is
accompanied by a qvalue of 0. (As defined in Section 6.4 of
[Part1], a qvalue of 0 means "not acceptable.")
2. The special "*" symbol in an Accept-Encoding field matches any
available content-coding not explicitly listed in the header
field.
3. If multiple content-codings are acceptable, then the acceptable
content-coding with the highest non-zero qvalue is preferred.
4. The "identity" content-coding is always acceptable, unless
specifically refused because the Accept-Encoding field includes
"identity;q=0", or because the field includes "*;q=0" and does
not explicitly include the "identity" content-coding. If the
Accept-Encoding field-value is empty, then only the "identity"
encoding is acceptable.
If an Accept-Encoding field is present in a request, and if the
server cannot send a response which is acceptable according to the
Accept-Encoding header, then the server SHOULD send an error response
with the 406 (Not Acceptable) status code.
If no Accept-Encoding field is present in a request, the server MAY
assume that the client will accept any content coding. In this case,
if "identity" is one of the available content-codings, then the
server SHOULD use the "identity" content-coding, unless it has
additional information that a different content-coding is meaningful
to the client.
Note: If the request does not include an Accept-Encoding field,
and if the "identity" content-coding is unavailable, then content-
codings commonly understood by HTTP/1.0 clients (i.e., "gzip" and
"compress") are preferred; some older clients improperly display
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
messages sent with other content-codings. The server might also
make this decision based on information about the particular user-
agent or client.
Note: Most HTTP/1.0 applications do not recognize or obey qvalues
associated with content-codings. This means that qvalues will not
work and are not permitted with x-gzip or x-compress.
5.4. Accept-Language
The "Accept-Language" request-header field can be used by user agents
to indicate the set of natural languages that are preferred in the
response. Language tags are defined in Section 2.4.
Accept-Language = "Accept-Language" ":" OWS
Accept-Language-v
Accept-Language-v =
1#( language-range [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
language-range =
<language-range, defined in [RFC4647], Section 2.1>
Each language-range can be given an associated quality value which
represents an estimate of the user's preference for the languages
specified by that range. The quality value defaults to "q=1". For
example,
Accept-Language: da, en-gb;q=0.8, en;q=0.7
would mean: "I prefer Danish, but will accept British English and
other types of English." (see also Section 2.3 of [RFC4647])
For matching, Section 3 of [RFC4647] defines several matching
schemes. Implementations can offer the most appropriate matching
scheme for their requirements.
Note: The "Basic Filtering" scheme ([RFC4647], Section 3.3.1) is
identical to the matching scheme that was previously defined in
Section 14.4 of [RFC2616].
It might be contrary to the privacy expectations of the user to send
an Accept-Language header with the complete linguistic preferences of
the user in every request. For a discussion of this issue, see
Section 7.1.
As intelligibility is highly dependent on the individual user, it is
recommended that client applications make the choice of linguistic
preference available to the user. If the choice is not made
available, then the Accept-Language header field MUST NOT be given in
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 21]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
the request.
Note: When making the choice of linguistic preference available to
the user, we remind implementors of the fact that users are not
familiar with the details of language matching as described above,
and should provide appropriate guidance. As an example, users
might assume that on selecting "en-gb", they will be served any
kind of English document if British English is not available. A
user agent might suggest in such a case to add "en" to get the
best matching behavior.
5.5. Content-Encoding
The "Content-Encoding" entity-header field indicates what content-
codings have been applied to the entity-body, and thus what decoding
mechanisms must be applied in order to obtain the media-type
referenced by the Content-Type header field. Content-Encoding is
primarily used to allow a document to be compressed without losing
the identity of its underlying media type.
Content-Encoding = "Content-Encoding" ":" OWS Content-Encoding-v
Content-Encoding-v = 1#content-coding
Content codings are defined in Section 2.2. An example of its use is
Content-Encoding: gzip
The content-coding is a characteristic of the entity identified by
the request-target. Typically, the entity-body is stored with this
encoding and is only decoded before rendering or analogous usage.
However, a non-transparent proxy MAY modify the content-coding if the
new coding is known to be acceptable to the recipient, unless the
"no-transform" cache-control directive is present in the message.
If the content-coding of an entity is not "identity", then the
response MUST include a Content-Encoding entity-header (Section 5.5)
that lists the non-identity content-coding(s) used.
If the content-coding of an entity in a request message is not
acceptable to the origin server, the server SHOULD respond with a
status code of 415 (Unsupported Media Type).
If multiple encodings have been applied to an entity, the content
codings MUST be listed in the order in which they were applied.
Additional information about the encoding parameters MAY be provided
by other entity-header fields not defined by this specification.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 22]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
5.6. Content-Language
The "Content-Language" entity-header field describes the natural
language(s) of the intended audience for the entity. Note that this
might not be equivalent to all the languages used within the entity-
body.
Content-Language = "Content-Language" ":" OWS Content-Language-v
Content-Language-v = 1#language-tag
Language tags are defined in Section 2.4. The primary purpose of
Content-Language is to allow a user to identify and differentiate
entities according to the user's own preferred language. Thus, if
the body content is intended only for a Danish-literate audience, the
appropriate field is
Content-Language: da
If no Content-Language is specified, the default is that the content
is intended for all language audiences. This might mean that the
sender does not consider it to be specific to any natural language,
or that the sender does not know for which language it is intended.
Multiple languages MAY be listed for content that is intended for
multiple audiences. For example, a rendition of the "Treaty of
Waitangi," presented simultaneously in the original Maori and English
versions, would call for
Content-Language: mi, en
However, just because multiple languages are present within an entity
does not mean that it is intended for multiple linguistic audiences.
An example would be a beginner's language primer, such as "A First
Lesson in Latin," which is clearly intended to be used by an English-
literate audience. In this case, the Content-Language would properly
only include "en".
Content-Language MAY be applied to any media type -- it is not
limited to textual documents.
5.7. Content-Location
The "Content-Location" entity-header field is used to supply a URI
for the entity in the message when it is accessible from a location
separate from the requested resource's URI.
A server SHOULD provide a Content-Location for the variant
corresponding to the response entity, especially in the case where a
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 23]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
resource has multiple entities associated with it, and those entities
actually have separate locations by which they might be individually
accessed, the server SHOULD provide a Content-Location for the
particular variant which is returned.
Content-Location = "Content-Location" ":" OWS
Content-Location-v
Content-Location-v =
absolute-URI / partial-URI
The Content-Location value is not a replacement for the original
requested URI; it is only a statement of the location of the resource
corresponding to this particular entity at the time of the request.
Future requests MAY specify the Content-Location URI as the request-
target if the desire is to identify the source of that particular
entity.
Section 6.1 of [Part2] describes how clients may process the Content-
Location header field.
A cache cannot assume that an entity with a Content-Location
different from the URI used to retrieve it can be used to respond to
later requests on that Content-Location URI. However, the Content-
Location can be used to differentiate between multiple entities
retrieved from a single requested resource, as described in Section
2.6 of [Part6].
If the Content-Location is a relative URI, the relative URI is
interpreted relative to the request-target.
The meaning of the Content-Location header in requests is undefined;
servers are free to ignore it in those cases.
5.8. Content-MD5
The "Content-MD5" entity-header field, as defined in [RFC1864], is an
MD5 digest of the entity-body that provides an end-to-end message
integrity check (MIC) of the entity-body. Note that a MIC is good
for detecting accidental modification of the entity-body in transit,
but is not proof against malicious attacks.
Content-MD5 = "Content-MD5" ":" OWS Content-MD5-v
Content-MD5-v = <base64 of 128 bit MD5 digest as per [RFC1864]>
The Content-MD5 header field MAY be generated by an origin server or
client to function as an integrity check of the entity-body. Only
origin servers or clients MAY generate the Content-MD5 header field;
proxies and gateways MUST NOT generate it, as this would defeat its
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 24]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
value as an end-to-end integrity check. Any recipient of the entity-
body, including gateways and proxies, MAY check that the digest value
in this header field matches that of the entity-body as received.
The MD5 digest is computed based on the content of the entity-body,
including any content-coding that has been applied, but not including
any transfer-encoding applied to the message-body. If the message is
received with a transfer-encoding, that encoding MUST be removed
prior to checking the Content-MD5 value against the received entity.
This has the result that the digest is computed on the octets of the
entity-body exactly as, and in the order that, they would be sent if
no transfer-encoding were being applied.
HTTP extends RFC 1864 to permit the digest to be computed for MIME
composite media-types (e.g., multipart/* and message/rfc822), but
this does not change how the digest is computed as defined in the
preceding paragraph.
There are several consequences of this. The entity-body for
composite types MAY contain many body-parts, each with its own MIME
and HTTP headers (including Content-MD5, Content-Transfer-Encoding,
and Content-Encoding headers). If a body-part has a Content-
Transfer-Encoding or Content-Encoding header, it is assumed that the
content of the body-part has had the encoding applied, and the body-
part is included in the Content-MD5 digest as is -- i.e., after the
application. The Transfer-Encoding header field is not allowed
within body-parts.
Conversion of all line breaks to CRLF MUST NOT be done before
computing or checking the digest: the line break convention used in
the text actually transmitted MUST be left unaltered when computing
the digest.
Note: While the definition of Content-MD5 is exactly the same for
HTTP as in RFC 1864 for MIME entity-bodies, there are several ways
in which the application of Content-MD5 to HTTP entity-bodies
differs from its application to MIME entity-bodies. One is that
HTTP, unlike MIME, does not use Content-Transfer-Encoding, and
does use Transfer-Encoding and Content-Encoding. Another is that
HTTP more frequently uses binary content types than MIME, so it is
worth noting that, in such cases, the byte order used to compute
the digest is the transmission byte order defined for the type.
Lastly, HTTP allows transmission of text types with any of several
line break conventions and not just the canonical form using CRLF.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 25]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
5.9. Content-Type
The "Content-Type" entity-header field indicates the media type of
the entity-body. In the case of responses to the HEAD method, the
media type is that which would have been sent had the request been a
GET.
Content-Type = "Content-Type" ":" OWS Content-Type-v
Content-Type-v = media-type
Media types are defined in Section 2.3. An example of the field is
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-4
Further discussion of methods for identifying the media type of an
entity is provided in Section 3.2.1.
6. IANA Considerations
6.1. Message Header Registration
The Message Header Registry located at <http://www.iana.org/
assignments/message-headers/message-header-index.html> should be
updated with the permanent registrations below (see [RFC3864]):
+---------------------+----------+----------+--------------+
| Header Field Name | Protocol | Status | Reference |
+---------------------+----------+----------+--------------+
| Accept | http | standard | Section 5.1 |
| Accept-Charset | http | standard | Section 5.2 |
| Accept-Encoding | http | standard | Section 5.3 |
| Accept-Language | http | standard | Section 5.4 |
| Content-Disposition | http | | Appendix B.1 |
| Content-Encoding | http | standard | Section 5.5 |
| Content-Language | http | standard | Section 5.6 |
| Content-Location | http | standard | Section 5.7 |
| Content-MD5 | http | standard | Section 5.8 |
| Content-Type | http | standard | Section 5.9 |
| MIME-Version | http | | Appendix A.1 |
+---------------------+----------+----------+--------------+
The change controller is: "IETF (iesg@ietf.org) - Internet
Engineering Task Force".
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 26]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
6.2. Content Coding Registry
The registration procedure for HTTP Content Codings is now defined by
Section 2.2.1 of this document.
The HTTP Content Codings Registry located at
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters> should be updated
with the registration below:
+----------+-----------------------------------+--------------------+
| Name | Description | Reference |
+----------+-----------------------------------+--------------------+
| compress | UNIX "compress" program method | Section 6.2.2.1 of |
| | | [Part1] |
| deflate | "zlib" format [RFC1950] with | Section 6.2.2.2 of |
| | "deflate" compression | [Part1] |
| gzip | Same as GNU zip [RFC1952] | Section 6.2.2.3 of |
| | | [Part1] |
| identity | No transformation | Section 2.2 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+--------------------+
7. Security Considerations
This section is meant to inform application developers, information
providers, and users of the security limitations in HTTP/1.1 as
described by this document. The discussion does not include
definitive solutions to the problems revealed, though it does make
some suggestions for reducing security risks.
7.1. Privacy Issues Connected to Accept Headers
Accept request-headers can reveal information about the user to all
servers which are accessed. The Accept-Language header in particular
can reveal information the user would consider to be of a private
nature, because the understanding of particular languages is often
strongly correlated to the membership of a particular ethnic group.
User agents which offer the option to configure the contents of an
Accept-Language header to be sent in every request are strongly
encouraged to let the configuration process include a message which
makes the user aware of the loss of privacy involved.
An approach that limits the loss of privacy would be for a user agent
to omit the sending of Accept-Language headers by default, and to ask
the user whether or not to start sending Accept-Language headers to a
server if it detects, by looking for any Vary response-header fields
generated by the server, that such sending could improve the quality
of service.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 27]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Elaborate user-customized accept header fields sent in every request,
in particular if these include quality values, can be used by servers
as relatively reliable and long-lived user identifiers. Such user
identifiers would allow content providers to do click-trail tracking,
and would allow collaborating content providers to match cross-server
click-trails or form submissions of individual users. Note that for
many users not behind a proxy, the network address of the host
running the user agent will also serve as a long-lived user
identifier. In environments where proxies are used to enhance
privacy, user agents ought to be conservative in offering accept
header configuration options to end users. As an extreme privacy
measure, proxies could filter the accept headers in relayed requests.
General purpose user agents which provide a high degree of header
configurability SHOULD warn users about the loss of privacy which can
be involved.
7.2. Content-Disposition Issues
[RFC2183], from which the often implemented Content-Disposition (see
Appendix B.1) header in HTTP is derived, has a number of very serious
security considerations. Content-Disposition is not part of the HTTP
standard, but since it is widely implemented, we are documenting its
use and risks for implementors. See Section 5 of [RFC2183] for
details.
8. Acknowledgments
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[ISO-8859-1]
International Organization for Standardization,
"Information technology -- 8-bit single-byte coded graphic
character sets -- Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1", ISO/
IEC 8859-1:1998, 1998.
[Part1] Fielding, R., Ed., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., Berners-Lee, T., Lafon, Y., Ed.,
and J. Reschke, Ed., "HTTP/1.1, part 1: URIs, Connections,
and Message Parsing", draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-09
(work in progress), March 2010.
[Part2] Fielding, R., Ed., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., Berners-Lee, T., Lafon, Y., Ed.,
and J. Reschke, Ed., "HTTP/1.1, part 2: Message
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 28]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Semantics", draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-09 (work in
progress), March 2010.
[Part4] Fielding, R., Ed., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., Berners-Lee, T., Lafon, Y., Ed.,
and J. Reschke, Ed., "HTTP/1.1, part 4: Conditional
Requests", draft-ietf-httpbis-p4-conditional-09 (work in
progress), March 2010.
[Part5] Fielding, R., Ed., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., Berners-Lee, T., Lafon, Y., Ed.,
and J. Reschke, Ed., "HTTP/1.1, part 5: Range Requests and
Partial Responses", draft-ietf-httpbis-p5-range-09 (work
in progress), March 2010.
[Part6] Fielding, R., Ed., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., Berners-Lee, T., Lafon, Y., Ed.,
Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke, Ed., "HTTP/1.1, part
6: Caching", draft-ietf-httpbis-p6-cache-09 (work in
progress), March 2010.
[RFC1864] Myers, J. and M. Rose, "The Content-MD5 Header Field",
RFC 1864, October 1995.
[RFC1950] Deutsch, L. and J-L. Gailly, "ZLIB Compressed Data Format
Specification version 3.3", RFC 1950, May 1996.
RFC 1950 is an Informational RFC, thus it may be less
stable than this specification. On the other hand, this
downward reference was present since the publication of
RFC 2068 in 1997 ([RFC2068]), therefore it is unlikely to
cause problems in practice. See also [BCP97].
[RFC1952] Deutsch, P., Gailly, J-L., Adler, M., Deutsch, L., and G.
Randers-Pehrson, "GZIP file format specification version
4.3", RFC 1952, May 1996.
RFC 1952 is an Informational RFC, thus it may be less
stable than this specification. On the other hand, this
downward reference was present since the publication of
RFC 2068 in 1997 ([RFC2068]), therefore it is unlikely to
cause problems in practice. See also [BCP97].
[RFC2045] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.
[RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 29]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
November 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4647] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Matching of Language
Tags", BCP 47, RFC 4647, September 2006.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008.
[RFC5646] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Tags for Identifying
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 5646, September 2009.
9.2. Informative References
[BCP97] Klensin, J. and S. Hartman, "Handling Normative References
to Standards-Track Documents", BCP 97, RFC 4897,
June 2007.
[RFC1945] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and H. Nielsen, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, May 1996.
[RFC2049] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Five: Conformance Criteria and
Examples", RFC 2049, November 1996.
[RFC2068] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Nielsen, H., and T.
Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1",
RFC 2068, January 1997.
[RFC2076] Palme, J., "Common Internet Message Headers", RFC 2076,
February 1997.
[RFC2183] Troost, R., Dorner, S., and K. Moore, "Communicating
Presentation Information in Internet Messages: The
Content-Disposition Header Field", RFC 2183, August 1997.
[RFC2277] Alvestrand, H., "IETF Policy on Character Sets and
Languages", BCP 18, RFC 2277, January 1998.
[RFC2295] Holtman, K. and A. Mutz, "Transparent Content Negotiation
in HTTP", RFC 2295, March 1998.
[RFC2388] Masinter, L., "Returning Values from Forms: multipart/
form-data", RFC 2388, August 1998.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 30]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
[RFC2557] Palme, F., Hopmann, A., Shelness, N., and E. Stefferud,
"MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML
(MHTML)", RFC 2557, March 1999.
[RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", RFC 3629, STD 63, November 2003.
[RFC3864] Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration
Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864,
September 2004.
[RFC4288] Freed, N. and J. Klensin, "Media Type Specifications and
Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC 4288, December 2005.
[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
[RFC5322] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
October 2008.
Appendix A. Differences Between HTTP Entities and RFC 2045 Entities
HTTP/1.1 uses many of the constructs defined for Internet Mail
([RFC5322]) and the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME
[RFC2045]) to allow entities to be transmitted in an open variety of
representations and with extensible mechanisms. However, RFC 2045
discusses mail, and HTTP has a few features that are different from
those described in RFC 2045. These differences were carefully chosen
to optimize performance over binary connections, to allow greater
freedom in the use of new media types, to make date comparisons
easier, and to acknowledge the practice of some early HTTP servers
and clients.
This appendix describes specific areas where HTTP differs from RFC
2045. Proxies and gateways to strict MIME environments SHOULD be
aware of these differences and provide the appropriate conversions
where necessary. Proxies and gateways from MIME environments to HTTP
also need to be aware of the differences because some conversions
might be required.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 31]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
A.1. MIME-Version
HTTP is not a MIME-compliant protocol. However, HTTP/1.1 messages
MAY include a single MIME-Version general-header field to indicate
what version of the MIME protocol was used to construct the message.
Use of the MIME-Version header field indicates that the message is in
full compliance with the MIME protocol (as defined in [RFC2045]).
Proxies/gateways are responsible for ensuring full compliance (where
possible) when exporting HTTP messages to strict MIME environments.
MIME-Version = "MIME-Version" ":" OWS MIME-Version-v
MIME-Version-v = 1*DIGIT "." 1*DIGIT
MIME version "1.0" is the default for use in HTTP/1.1. However,
HTTP/1.1 message parsing and semantics are defined by this document
and not the MIME specification.
A.2. Conversion to Canonical Form
[RFC2045] requires that an Internet mail entity be converted to
canonical form prior to being transferred, as described in Section 4
of [RFC2049]. Section 2.3.1 of this document describes the forms
allowed for subtypes of the "text" media type when transmitted over
HTTP. [RFC2046] requires that content with a type of "text"
represent line breaks as CRLF and forbids the use of CR or LF outside
of line break sequences. HTTP allows CRLF, bare CR, and bare LF to
indicate a line break within text content when a message is
transmitted over HTTP.
Where it is possible, a proxy or gateway from HTTP to a strict MIME
environment SHOULD translate all line breaks within the text media
types described in Section 2.3.1 of this document to the RFC 2049
canonical form of CRLF. Note, however, that this might be
complicated by the presence of a Content-Encoding and by the fact
that HTTP allows the use of some character sets which do not use
octets 13 and 10 to represent CR and LF, as is the case for some
multi-byte character sets.
Implementors should note that conversion will break any cryptographic
checksums applied to the original content unless the original content
is already in canonical form. Therefore, the canonical form is
recommended for any content that uses such checksums in HTTP.
A.3. Conversion of Date Formats
HTTP/1.1 uses a restricted set of date formats (Section 6.1 of
[Part1]) to simplify the process of date comparison. Proxies and
gateways from other protocols SHOULD ensure that any Date header
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 32]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
field present in a message conforms to one of the HTTP/1.1 formats
and rewrite the date if necessary.
A.4. Introduction of Content-Encoding
RFC 2045 does not include any concept equivalent to HTTP/1.1's
Content-Encoding header field. Since this acts as a modifier on the
media type, proxies and gateways from HTTP to MIME-compliant
protocols MUST either change the value of the Content-Type header
field or decode the entity-body before forwarding the message. (Some
experimental applications of Content-Type for Internet mail have used
a media-type parameter of ";conversions=<content-coding>" to perform
a function equivalent to Content-Encoding. However, this parameter
is not part of RFC 2045).
A.5. No Content-Transfer-Encoding
HTTP does not use the Content-Transfer-Encoding field of RFC 2045.
Proxies and gateways from MIME-compliant protocols to HTTP MUST
remove any Content-Transfer-Encoding prior to delivering the response
message to an HTTP client.
Proxies and gateways from HTTP to MIME-compliant protocols are
responsible for ensuring that the message is in the correct format
and encoding for safe transport on that protocol, where "safe
transport" is defined by the limitations of the protocol being used.
Such a proxy or gateway SHOULD label the data with an appropriate
Content-Transfer-Encoding if doing so will improve the likelihood of
safe transport over the destination protocol.
A.6. Introduction of Transfer-Encoding
HTTP/1.1 introduces the Transfer-Encoding header field (Section 9.7
of [Part1]). Proxies/gateways MUST remove any transfer-coding prior
to forwarding a message via a MIME-compliant protocol.
A.7. MHTML and Line Length Limitations
HTTP implementations which share code with MHTML [RFC2557]
implementations need to be aware of MIME line length limitations.
Since HTTP does not have this limitation, HTTP does not fold long
lines. MHTML messages being transported by HTTP follow all
conventions of MHTML, including line length limitations and folding,
canonicalization, etc., since HTTP transports all message-bodies as
payload (see Section 2.3.2) and does not interpret the content or any
MIME header lines that might be contained therein.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 33]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Appendix B. Additional Features
[RFC1945] and [RFC2068] document protocol elements used by some
existing HTTP implementations, but not consistently and correctly
across most HTTP/1.1 applications. Implementors are advised to be
aware of these features, but cannot rely upon their presence in, or
interoperability with, other HTTP/1.1 applications. Some of these
describe proposed experimental features, and some describe features
that experimental deployment found lacking that are now addressed in
the base HTTP/1.1 specification.
A number of other headers, such as Content-Disposition and Title,
from SMTP and MIME are also often implemented (see [RFC2076]).
B.1. Content-Disposition
The "Content-Disposition" response-header field has been proposed as
a means for the origin server to suggest a default filename if the
user requests that the content is saved to a file. This usage is
derived from the definition of Content-Disposition in [RFC2183].
content-disposition = "Content-Disposition" ":" OWS
content-disposition-v
content-disposition-v = disposition-type
*( OWS ";" OWS disposition-parm )
disposition-type = "attachment" / disp-extension-token
disposition-parm = filename-parm / disp-extension-parm
filename-parm = "filename" "=" quoted-string
disp-extension-token = token
disp-extension-parm = token "=" ( token / quoted-string )
An example is
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="fname.ext"
The receiving user agent SHOULD NOT respect any directory path
information present in the filename-parm parameter, which is the only
parameter believed to apply to HTTP implementations at this time.
The filename SHOULD be treated as a terminal component only.
If this header is used in a response with the application/
octet-stream content-type, the implied suggestion is that the user
agent should not display the response, but directly enter a "save
response as..." dialog.
See Section 7.2 for Content-Disposition security issues.
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 34]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Appendix C. Compatibility with Previous Versions
C.1. Changes from RFC 2068
Transfer-coding and message lengths all interact in ways that
required fixing exactly when chunked encoding is used (to allow for
transfer encoding that may not be self delimiting); it was important
to straighten out exactly how message lengths are computed.
(Section 3.2.2, see also [Part1], [Part5] and [Part6]).
Charset wildcarding is introduced to avoid explosion of character set
names in accept headers. (Section 5.2)
Content-Base was deleted from the specification: it was not
implemented widely, and there is no simple, safe way to introduce it
without a robust extension mechanism. In addition, it is used in a
similar, but not identical fashion in MHTML [RFC2557].
A content-coding of "identity" was introduced, to solve problems
discovered in caching. (Section 2.2)
The Alternates, Content-Version, Derived-From, Link, URI, Public and
Content-Base header fields were defined in previous versions of this
specification, but not commonly implemented. See Section 19.6.2 of
[RFC2068].
C.2. Changes from RFC 2616
Clarify contexts that charset is used in. (Section 2.1)
Remove base URI setting semantics for Content-Location due to poor
implementation support, which was caused by too many broken servers
emitting bogus Content-Location headers, and also the potentially
undesirable effect of potentially breaking relative links in content-
negotiated resources. (Section 5.7)
Remove reference to non-existant identity transfer-coding value
tokens. (Appendix A.5)
Appendix D. Collected ABNF
Accept = "Accept:" OWS Accept-v
Accept-Charset = "Accept-Charset:" OWS Accept-Charset-v
Accept-Charset-v = *( "," OWS ) ( charset / "*" ) [ OWS ";" OWS "q="
qvalue ] *( OWS "," [ OWS ( charset / "*" ) [ OWS ";" OWS "q="
qvalue ] ] )
Accept-Encoding = "Accept-Encoding:" OWS Accept-Encoding-v
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 35]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Accept-Encoding-v = [ ( "," / ( codings [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
) *( OWS "," [ OWS codings [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] ] ) ]
Accept-Language = "Accept-Language:" OWS Accept-Language-v
Accept-Language-v = *( "," OWS ) language-range [ OWS ";" OWS "q="
qvalue ] *( OWS "," [ OWS language-range [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ]
] )
Accept-v = [ ( "," / ( media-range [ accept-params ] ) ) *( OWS "," [
OWS media-range [ accept-params ] ] ) ]
Content-Encoding = "Content-Encoding:" OWS Content-Encoding-v
Content-Encoding-v = *( "," OWS ) content-coding *( OWS "," [ OWS
content-coding ] )
Content-Language = "Content-Language:" OWS Content-Language-v
Content-Language-v = *( "," OWS ) language-tag *( OWS "," [ OWS
language-tag ] )
Content-Length = <Content-Length, defined in [Part1], Section 9.2>
Content-Location = "Content-Location:" OWS Content-Location-v
Content-Location-v = absolute-URI / partial-URI
Content-MD5 = "Content-MD5:" OWS Content-MD5-v
Content-MD5-v = <base64 of 128 bit MD5 digest as per [RFC1864]>
Content-Range = <Content-Range, defined in [Part5], Section 5.2>
Content-Type = "Content-Type:" OWS Content-Type-v
Content-Type-v = media-type
Expires = <Expires, defined in [Part6], Section 3.3>
Last-Modified = <Last-Modified, defined in [Part4], Section 6.6>
MIME-Version = "MIME-Version:" OWS MIME-Version-v
MIME-Version-v = 1*DIGIT "." 1*DIGIT
OWS = <OWS, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
absolute-URI = <absolute-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
accept-ext = OWS ";" OWS token [ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) ]
accept-params = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue *accept-ext
attribute = token
charset = token
codings = ( content-coding / "*" )
content-coding = token
content-disposition = "Content-Disposition:" OWS
content-disposition-v
content-disposition-v = disposition-type *( OWS ";" OWS
disposition-parm )
disp-extension-parm = token "=" ( token / quoted-string )
disp-extension-token = token
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 36]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
disposition-parm = filename-parm / disp-extension-parm
disposition-type = "attachment" / disp-extension-token
entity-body = *OCTET
entity-header = Content-Encoding / Content-Language / Content-Length
/ Content-Location / Content-MD5 / Content-Range / Content-Type /
Expires / Last-Modified / extension-header
extension-header = header-field
filename-parm = "filename=" quoted-string
header-field = <header-field, defined in [Part1], Section 3.2>
language-range = <language-range, defined in [RFC4647], Section 2.1>
language-tag = <Language-Tag, defined in [RFC5646], Section 2.1>
media-range = ( "*/*" / ( type "/*" ) / ( type "/" subtype ) ) *( OWS
";" OWS parameter )
media-type = type "/" subtype *( OWS ";" OWS parameter )
parameter = attribute "=" value
partial-URI = <partial-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
quoted-string = <quoted-string, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
qvalue = <qvalue, defined in [Part1], Section 6.4>
subtype = token
token = <token, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
type = token
value = token / quoted-string
ABNF diagnostics:
; Accept defined but not used
; Accept-Charset defined but not used
; Accept-Encoding defined but not used
; Accept-Language defined but not used
; MIME-Version defined but not used
; content-disposition defined but not used
; entity-body defined but not used
; entity-header defined but not used
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 37]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Appendix E. Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before publication)
E.1. Since RFC2616
Extracted relevant partitions from [RFC2616].
E.2. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-00
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/8>: "Media Type
Registrations" (<http://purl.org/NET/http-errata#media-reg>)
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/14>: "Clarification
regarding quoting of charset values"
(<http://purl.org/NET/http-errata#charactersets>)
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/16>: "Remove
'identity' token references"
(<http://purl.org/NET/http-errata#identity>)
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/25>: "Accept-
Encoding BNF"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/35>: "Normative and
Informative references"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/46>: "RFC1700
references"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/55>: "Updating to
RFC4288"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/65>: "Informative
references"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/66>: "ISO-8859-1
Reference"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/68>: "Encoding
References Normative"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/86>: "Normative up-
to-date references"
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 38]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
E.3. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-01
Ongoing work on ABNF conversion
(<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/36>):
o Add explicit references to BNF syntax and rules imported from
other parts of the specification.
E.4. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-02
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/67>: "Quoting
Charsets"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/105>:
"Classification for Allow header"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/115>: "missing
default for qvalue in description of Accept-Encoding"
Ongoing work on IANA Message Header Registration
(<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/40>):
o Reference RFC 3984, and update header registrations for headers
defined in this document.
E.5. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-03
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/67>: "Quoting
Charsets"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/113>: "language tag
matching (Accept-Language) vs RFC4647"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/121>: "RFC 1806 has
been replaced by RFC2183"
Other changes:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/68>: "Encoding
References Normative" -- rephrase the annotation and reference
[BCP97].
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 39]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
E.6. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-04
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/132>: "RFC 2822 is
updated by RFC 5322"
Ongoing work on ABNF conversion
(<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/36>):
o Use "/" instead of "|" for alternatives.
o Introduce new ABNF rules for "bad" whitespace ("BWS"), optional
whitespace ("OWS") and required whitespace ("RWS").
o Rewrite ABNFs to spell out whitespace rules, factor out header
value format definitions.
E.7. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-05
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/118>: "Join
"Differences Between HTTP Entities and RFC 2045 Entities"?"
Final work on ABNF conversion
(<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/36>):
o Add appendix containing collected and expanded ABNF, reorganize
ABNF introduction.
Other changes:
o Move definition of quality values into Part 1.
E.8. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-06
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/80>: "Content-
Location isn't special"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/155>: "Content
Sniffing"
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 40]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
E.9. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-07
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/13>: "Updated
reference for language tags"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/110>: "Clarify rules
for determining what entities a response carries"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/154>: "Content-
Location base-setting problems"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/155>: "Content
Sniffing"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/188>: "pick IANA
policy (RFC5226) for Transfer Coding / Content Coding"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/189>: "move
definitions of gzip/deflate/compress to part 1"
Partly resolved issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/148>: "update IANA
requirements wrt Transfer-Coding values" (add the IANA
Considerations subsection)
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/149>: "update IANA
requirements wrt Content-Coding values" (add the IANA
Considerations subsection)
E.10. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-08
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/81>: "Content
Negotiation for media types"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/181>: "Accept-
Language: which RFC4647 filtering?"
Index
A
Accept header 16
Accept-Charset header 19
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 41]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Accept-Encoding header 19
Accept-Language header 21
Alternates header 35
C
Coding Format
compress 8
deflate 8
gzip 9
identity 9
compress (Coding Format) 8
content negotiation 5
Content-Base header 35
Content-Disposition header 34
Content-Encoding header 22
Content-Language header 23
Content-Location header 23
Content-MD5 header 24
Content-Type header 26
Content-Version header 35
D
deflate (Coding Format) 8
Derived-From header 35
E
entity 5
G
Grammar
Accept 17
Accept-Charset 19
Accept-Charset-v 19
Accept-Encoding 19
Accept-Encoding-v 19
accept-ext 17
Accept-Language 21
Accept-Language-v 21
accept-params 17
Accept-v 17
attribute 10
charset 7
codings 19
content-coding 8
content-disposition 34
content-disposition-v 34
Content-Encoding 22
Content-Encoding-v 22
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 42]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Content-Language 23
Content-Language-v 23
Content-Location 24
Content-Location-v 24
Content-MD5 24
Content-MD5-v 24
Content-Type 26
Content-Type-v 26
disp-extension-parm 34
disp-extension-token 34
disposition-parm 34
disposition-type 34
entity-body 13
entity-header 12
extension-header 12
filename-parm 34
language-range 21
language-tag 12
media-range 17
media-type 9
MIME-Version 32
MIME-Version-v 32
parameter 10
subtype 9
type 9
value 10
gzip (Coding Format) 9
H
Headers
Accept 16
Accept-Charset 19
Accept-Encoding 19
Accept-Language 21
Alternate 35
Content-Base 35
Content-Disposition 34
Content-Encoding 22
Content-Language 23
Content-Location 23
Content-MD5 24
Content-Type 26
Content-Version 35
Derived-From 35
Link 35
MIME-Version 32
Public 35
URI 35
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 43]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
I
identity (Coding Format) 9
L
Link header 35
M
MIME-Version header 32
P
Public header 35
R
representation 5
U
URI header 35
V
variant 5
Authors' Addresses
Roy T. Fielding (editor)
Day Software
23 Corporate Plaza DR, Suite 280
Newport Beach, CA 92660
USA
Phone: +1-949-706-5300
Fax: +1-949-706-5305
Email: fielding@gbiv.com
URI: http://roy.gbiv.com/
Jim Gettys
One Laptop per Child
21 Oak Knoll Road
Carlisle, MA 01741
USA
Email: jg@laptop.org
URI: http://www.laptop.org/
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 44]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Jeffrey C. Mogul
Hewlett-Packard Company
HP Labs, Large Scale Systems Group
1501 Page Mill Road, MS 1177
Palo Alto, CA 94304
USA
Email: JeffMogul@acm.org
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
USA
Email: henrikn@microsoft.com
Larry Masinter
Adobe Systems, Incorporated
345 Park Ave
San Jose, CA 95110
USA
Email: LMM@acm.org
URI: http://larry.masinter.net/
Paul J. Leach
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
Email: paulle@microsoft.com
Tim Berners-Lee
World Wide Web Consortium
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
The Stata Center, Building 32
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
Email: timbl@w3.org
URI: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 45]
Internet-Draft HTTP/1.1, Part 3 March 2010
Yves Lafon (editor)
World Wide Web Consortium
W3C / ERCIM
2004, rte des Lucioles
Sophia-Antipolis, AM 06902
France
Email: ylafon@w3.org
URI: http://www.raubacapeu.net/people/yves/
Julian F. Reschke (editor)
greenbytes GmbH
Hafenweg 16
Muenster, NW 48155
Germany
Phone: +49 251 2807760
Fax: +49 251 2807761
Email: julian.reschke@greenbytes.de
URI: http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/
Fielding, et al. Expires September 9, 2010 [Page 46]
Html markup produced by rfcmarkup 1.126, available from
https://tools.ietf.org/tools/rfcmarkup/