- From: Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
- Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 20:19:11 +0200 (MET DST)
- To: fielding@kiwi.ics.uci.edu (Roy T. Fielding)
- Cc: masinter@parc.xerox.com, ipp@pwg.org, ietf-http-ext@w3.org
Roy T. Fielding: > [Larry Masinter:] >>Forwarders MUST actually understand methods, because -- unfortunately -- >>the meaning of HTTP headers and responses differ based on the method >>of the request (e.g., Content-Length for HEAD vs GET). Many forwarding >>systems will not accept new methods gracefully. > >Actually, that is only true for HEAD and GET -- all header fields have >the same meaning for all other methods. [...] > I can't think of any other >exceptions at the moment -- if any have been added in the past year >or so, they need to be removed. I just checked the latest revision of the spec and no other exceptions have been added. Also, reviewing the material in sections 4.3 and 4.4, I conclude that it is possible to make an HTTP/1.1 forwarder which will correctly forward any 1.1 message even if it has an unknown new method. This is of course as it should be: the spec would be broken otherwise. Koen.
Received on Thursday, 11 June 1998 14:19:15 UTC