Re: Getting full URI to the server

At 5:55 AM 2/13/95, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>Well, after reading all the comments, I have come to the following
>conclusions:
>
>   1) Too many web developers work on the weekends;

Agree. (unfortunately)

>   2) Marketing has too much influence on web technology; and,

Agree!

>   3) There's not much I can do about either one.

Disagree! You're working very hard to put together a good standard. If it
meets the needs of developers and users and gets accepted in a timely
fashion, this will have much more influence on the WWW than rogue
commercial development organizations.

>So, which one should we include in the 1.1 specification:
>
>   Host: foo.bar.com

As you mentioned earlier, this is all that is *required*, since everything
else should be in the URL as received. It is certainly is easier to
implement because no parsing is required to extract this info.

>   Orig-URI: http//foo.bar.com:8001/home/is/where/the/wallet/is.html

On the other hand, this format is a little more work to parse, but contains
valuable information that is often lost or munged when data passes through
proxies, etc. Looking at just long-term usefulness, this version seems to
have a greater chance at being able to support multiple, unforeseen uses.
(it certainly makes implementing proxy servers easier...)

>Also, should it be:
>
>   a) recommended for all requests

Yes!

>   b) recommended only for requests to standard URLs like / and /site.idx

No!

>I am assuming that it will not be recommended for requests that already
>use the full URI, and that will remain the goal for 2.0.

Why not be consistent? Proxies can still munge a full URI as easily as they
can mangle a current version. Might as well maintain it unscathed in the
header field where the real server can grab it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chuck Shotton
cshotton@biap.com                                  http://www.biap.com/
cshotton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu                           "I am NOT here."

Received on Monday, 13 February 1995 07:40:40 UTC