Re: Additional HTTP Status Codes - "Request Too Onerous"

Interesting idea, particularly considering that with cloud computing more
and more work is being done in response to HTTP requests. I'm also actively
pushing people to use HTTP as intended (headers and all) for cloud service
APIs so "Request Too Onerous" could be a sensible response to "start
1,000,000 virtual machines".

Is it the client's fault for making onerous requests though, or the
server's for being unable or unwilling to satisfy them? I'm more inclined
to think that this is a server (5xx) issue.

Sam

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Alexander Dutton <
alexander.dutton@oucs.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

>
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> Hi all,
>
> Apologies if I'm speaking out of turn, but is there a case to be made
> for a "Request Too Onerous" status code to be included in the draft[1]?
>
> There are occasions where a web service might want to dissuade user
> agents from:
>
> a) requesting too large a response (e.g. tell me everything you know)
> b) requesting too much computation (e.g. solve this Travelling
> Salesman Problem for more nodes than is tractable)
>
> In each case a client would know that a simpler request is more likely
> to succeed. As far as I can tell, the use case is not covered by any
> other status code (not 400 as the request is well-formed; not 500 as
> the server didn't break; not 503 as there's no expectation that the
> request might be serviceable at a later date).
>
> This would complement the proposed 429 Too Many Requests, covering the
> other case where one might want to tame over-demanding clients.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Alexander
>
> [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-http-new-status-03
>
> - --
> Alexander Dutton
> Developer, InfoDev, data.ox.ac.uk, OxPoints
> Oxford University Computing Services, ℡ 01865 (6)13483
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