Re: Request methods that allow an entity-body [i19]

Previous to this, the most recent proposal on this issue (#19):
   <http://www.w3.org/mid/0B0A6372-C332-40A1-AF9D-252B8B1EF0BA@mnot.net>

Not too much discussion happened then; do we need a new proposal?


On 30/11/2007, at 7:29 AM, Mark Baker wrote:

>
> On 11/30/07, Scott Nichol <snicholnews@scottnichol.com> wrote:
>> The original portion of the spec I was questioning is
>>
>> <quote>
>> The presence of a message-body in a request is signaled by the  
>> inclusion
>> of a Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header field in the  
>> request's
>> message-headers. A message-body MUST NOT be included in a request  
>> if the
>> specification of the request method (Section 5.1.1) does not allow
>> sending an entity-body in requests.
>> </quote>
>>
>> If Roy says "HTTP allows a message body on any request", then why  
>> does
>> the second sentence in the above even appear in the spec?
>
> Those aren't inconsistent, but I reckon trying to be prescriptive in
> that way makes little sense as, IMO, it should be a best practice not
> to define methods which preclude entity bodies, if only for reasons of
> extensibility.  *shrug*
>
>> I was concerned that the spec does not say in the description of any
>> request method that an entity-body is not allowed.  Based on what Roy
>> says, the spec is correct: there is no request method for which an
>> entity-body is not allowed.  That an entity-body for a HEAD or GET  
>> would
>> be "useless" is not relevant.  A client is allowed send one and a  
>> server
>> must parse it.
>>
>> What does "must parse it" imply?
>
> There's no requirement that the server *do* anything with the  
> entity body.
>
>> I raised this issue because of a specific problem between NuSOAP and
>> lighttpd.  The former sends a GET with Content-Length: 0 when  
>> fetching
>> WSDL.  The latter responds with "400 Bad Request" because of the
>> message-body.  Would that server behavior be considered out of spec?
>> The server presumably "parsed" the request.
>
> Yes, the server is buggy.
>
> FWIW, the message that kicked off the thread I referenced came to be
> because of the same problem; some client (the Swiss HttpClient IIRC)
> inserting "Content-Length: 0" and a server (Tomcat) choking on it.
>
> Mark.
> -- 
> Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
> Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com
>


--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Friday, 30 November 2007 19:53:12 UTC