Re: mid-course errors

On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Jeffrey Mogul wrote:

> But if the consensus is that Content-Length doesn't belong in the footer,
> then perhaps we need to define a new "footer-eligible" header that
> serves purpose that we are looking for: "Stop this response, I didn't
> mean it when I said '200' back in the header".  E.g., a new header
> called "Failed:" which can convey an updated status code and message.
> 
> E.g.,
> 	HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> 	...
> 	Transfer-Encoding: Chunked
> 
> 	18
> 	This is a complete
> 	0
> 	Failed: 500 Internal Server Error
> 
> Just a modest proposal, of course.

Well, independant of whether Content-Length belongs in the footer, I was
uncomfortable with the side-effect usage proposed earlier. What you
proposed above is close to what I was thinking of suggesting.

An alternate less modest proposal ....

       0
       Reset-Response: xxx abcde asdl
       CRLF

Where the xxx... is a status code and interpretation.  With appropriate
status codes (appropriate to be defined), a replacement response would
immediately follow and might be a full error response with optional
content.  This approach appeals to me because is allows for the maximum
amount of communication between the server and the user for problem
understanding/ resolution.

Yeah .... I agree ... either of these may be out of scope for the
transition we are facting from propsed->draft.

Dave Morris

Received on Tuesday, 15 April 1997 16:28:10 UTC