1xx Clarification

Section 8.2 of RFC 2068 has the following requirement:

o  An HTTP/1.1 (or later) client MUST be prepared to accept a 100
   (Continue) status followed by a regular response.

I have gone around asking people if the following behavior is legal:

User Establishes Connection

Server sends first 1xx Response

User sends GET

Server sends second 1xx Response

Server Sends 200 Response

Server sends third 1xx Response

User Closes Connection

I have heard two different responses. Some people claim that the
requirement in 8.2 means that only the second 1xx Response is legal,
that 1xx responses may only be sent when a method is outstanding.
Others, however, have claimed that the requirement only means that IF a
method is outstanding THEN the client must be able to accept a 100
response. However, they add, it is completely legal for a server to send
a 1xx Response any time it wants and that proxies must pass them and
clients must, at worst, ignore them. In fact, Roy Fielding has told me
that he had language like that in a previous version of the draft and
only noticed it was missing when I pointed the issue out to him.

It seems a clarification is in order. As such I propose that the
following paragraph be added to the end of section 10.1:

1xx responses MAY be sent independently of requests. Clients MUST always
be able to accept 1xx responses and MUST ignore any 1xx response they do
not understand. In addition, proxies MUST pass through any 1xx response
they do not understand.

	Thanks,
		Yaron

Received on Tuesday, 8 April 1997 21:14:02 UTC