Re: Cookie Question

wyllys@reston.ans.net wrote:

> As a proxy daemon author, I have thought of several potential
> features or enhancements that could be made if there was a way
> to include more proxy specific data in the request, beyond the
> authentication information.

The PEP mechanism[1] is designed to accomodate such extensions.

A proxy would write, in any response to any client:

	200 OK
	Protocol-Info: {http://reston.ans.net/proxy-cookie
			{for *} {str opt} {scope conn}
				{params {cookie 123jkd}}}
	Content-Type: xxx/yyy

	...etc...

The Protocol-Info header field means, "For access to
any resource (that's the {for *} part) you may optionally
use the extension identified as (and specified at)
http://reston.ans.net/proxy-cookie"

A suitably extended client could then add a C-Protocol
header in subsequent requests:

	GET http://anywhere.on.earth/something.html HTTP/1.1
	Accept: text/*
	Connection: C-Protocol
	C-Protocol: {http://reston.ans.net/proxy-cookie
			{params {cookie 123jkd}}}

Your application might need some more params, but I hope
you get the idea.

It's a bit wordy, but it can be done in a decentralized
fashion... just decide on a URL, and specify it. If folks
like it and use it, a revision of the HTTP standard can
include the extension with some of the excess syntax
removed.

Dan

[1] PEP: an Extension Mechanism for HTTP
$Date: 1997/01/31 23:05:32 $
ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-http-pep-01.txt
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-http-pep

Received on Friday, 14 February 1997 15:02:27 UTC