Re: Solution to the CGI message trap

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Scott Lawrence wrote:

> Jeffrey Mogul wrote:
> > 
> >     This would be exactly my point ... if a new method is sent to a
> >     server which doesn't support the application which uses the new
> >     method, so what?  Brain dead client application gets what it
> >     deserves ... a brain dead response.
> > 
> > Right.  But the problem remains, how is the client supposed to know
> > whether or not the server supports the application in question? 
> 
> Why doesn't OPTIONS fit the bill here?  If I send OPTIONS and get back
> something that looks like a GET response, I can pretty much figure out that
> I've hit something brain dead.

Sure, but if you don't get something that looks like a GET response then
you know nothing, eg.:

marcs@alive:~$ telnet alive 80
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to alive.znep.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
OPTIONS /cgi-bin/printenv HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:35:33 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.2-dev (Unix)
Content-Length: 0
Allow: GET, HEAD, POST, OPTIONS, TRACE
Connection: close

Connection closed by foreign host.
marcs@alive:~$ telnet alive 80
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to alive.znep.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
DELETE /cgi-bin/printenv HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:35:47 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.2-dev (Unix)
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain

GATEWAY_INTERFACE=CGI/1.1
UNIQUE_ID=NdCA838AAAEAABPafGA
[...]

Received on Tuesday, 11 August 1998 13:41:15 UTC