- From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 08:51:24 -0800
- To: Henrik Nordström <henrik@henriknordstrom.net>
- Cc: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>, "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>
Fair enough. Henrik, any thoughts about SHOULD vs MAY? Roy and Mark both expressed a preference for MAY. On 05/02/2008, at 7:35 AM, Henrik Nordström wrote: > I meant replacing MUST by SHOULD, making the use of Allow in 405 > responses a SHOULD level requirement. > > This is a requirement that is in some cases impractical for servers to > implement properly. And it's also a case where it's most likely better > the sever doesn't say anything at all if it doesn't know than to try > to > guess.. If it doesn't know let the client guess if it want. > > But on the other hand a 405 without Allow is pretty much equivalent > to a > 403. So an alternative approach would be to add a note that if the > server can not provide a reliable list of allowed methods then 403 > should be returned instead of 405, reserving 405 to be used only when > the server knows within rasonable doubt what methods it accepts on the > resource. And this is probably a better way to address the problem. > > I do not think relaxing the meaning of Allow is a good idea. If > Allow is > given then the client SHOULD assume it's the truth. Changing this > would > render Allow as such pretty useless. > > It's the same for Allow headers in response to GET btw. If the server > doesn't really know then there SHOULD NOT be an Allow header in the > response. > > Regards > Henrik > > > > tis 2008-02-05 klockan 06:39 -0800 skrev Mark Nottingham: >> Are you saying that s/MUST/SHOULD/ is adequate, or agreeing that >> splitting it into two requirements, making the second a SHOULD, is >> necessary? >> >> >> On 05/02/2008, at 4:47 AM, Henrik Nordström wrote: >> >>> >>> mån 2008-02-04 klockan 23:08 -0800 skrev Mark Nottingham: >>>> My thinking was that it may be necessary to preserve the MUST on >>>> the >>>> presence of the header (in case any software had been written to >>>> depend upon its presence), but to loosen the implied requirement >>>> that >>>> the list of headers be complete. >>> >>> SHOULD is more than sufficuent for a such requirement level. >>> >>> Regards >>> Henrik >> >> >> -- >> Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/ >> >> -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2008 16:51:43 UTC