Re: [#202] reason phrase

On 7 Aug 2013 01:56, "David Morris" <dwm@xpasc.com> wrote:
> I think I've seen code that examined the phrase but I don't recall where.
> I've found the phrase semi-useful in casual debugging with wire level
> data, but I'll freely agree that having a tool like wireshark add the
> phrase as part of its interpretation would be much better.

I've seen the reason phrase used for machine to machine cases in
conjunction with very general codes such as bad request or conflict, where
it hasn't been worth filling out the body but information about an error is
still useful for debugging. The use case is for debugging. The client
receives an unexpected error and the reason phrase gives them something to
grep for in the code or a description of the error that isn't relevant to
the actual client software. The body may be difficult to use in these cases
for whatever reason.

A header would be an acceptable alternative, but the current location
within the status line ensures current frameworks often make it slightly
simpler to add than using a sperate header. In the interests of being able
to pass messages between http 1 and 2 without loss of data it seems
worthwhile to at least retain it as a header. I agree that clients
shouldn't use the value beyond logging it though.