Re: New section for Host

Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> 
> 10.22  Host
> 
>    The Host request-header field specifies the Internet host and port
>    number of the resource being requested, as obtained from the original
>    http URL (Section 3.2.2) given by the user or referring resource.
>    The Host field value must represent the network location of the
>    origin server or gateway given by the original http URL.  This allows
>    the origin server or gateway to differentiate between
>    internally-ambiguous URLs (such as the root "/" URL of a server
>    harboring multiple virtual hostnames).
> 
>        Host = "Host" ":" host [ ":" port ]    ; see Section 3.2.2
> 
>    A "host" without any trailing port information is equivalent to
>    a value of "host:80".  For example, a request on the origin server
>    for <http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/> must include:
> 
>        GET /pub/WWW/ HTTP/1.1
>        Host: www.w3.org
> 
>    The Host header field must be included in all HTTP/1.1 request
>    messages on the Internet (i.e., on any message corresponding to a
>    request for an http URL, as described in Section 3.2.2).  If the
>    Host field is not already present, an HTTP/1.1 proxy must add a Host
>    field to the request message prior to forwarding it on the Internet.
>    If an HTTP/1.1 request message lacking a Host header field is
>    received via the Internet by an origin server or gateway, that server
>    must respond with a 400 status code.


This looks great.  The only thing I would change would
be to point out that when a port is missing, the port
is implied to be the default port, which is 80 for
standard HTTP and 443 for HTTP over SSL (i.e. https urls).

:lou
-- 
Lou Montulli                 http://www.netscape.com/people/montulli/
       Netscape Communications Corp.

Received on Monday, 18 March 1996 13:06:20 UTC