RE: HTTP entity length

> From: jordi ros

> Suppose the following case:
>
> A- Our message includes a message-body, which means that
> condition 1 in
> section 4.4 is false, and
> B- There is no Transfer-Encoding, which means that
> condition 2 in 4.4 is
> false, and
> C- There is no Content-Length field, which means that
> condition 3 in 4.4 is
> false (note that this is possible since from section
> 14.13 we have that
> applications SHOULD (only SHOULD) use this field to indicate the
> transfer-length when it is not prohibited by rules in
> section 4.4) and
> D- The content-type is not "multipart/byteranges", which
> means that condition 4 in 4.4 is false, and
> E- The server is not closing the connection, which means
> that condition 5 is false.

Your point A is where the problem lies.

If you don't send a Content-Length, and you don't send a
'Transfer-Encoding: chunked', and your Content-Type is not some kind
of 'multipart', then your message does not include a message-body;
it ends at the CRLF following the last header.  If you are a client,
then anything you send following that will be interpreted as the
beginning of a new request; if you are a server then I have no idea
what clients might do.

SHOULD does not mean 'you can ignore this rule' - it means that you
don't have to do it to be compliant, but you aught to unless there
is an excellent reason.

Received on Wednesday, 2 February 2000 10:42:31 UTC