RE: ``canonical'' root URL of a server?

To the original post ... sounds like an editorial bug in the
authentication draft.  After Larry's post I went digging 'cause I knew
I'd seen a definition in the past of a 'canonical form'.  Here is what
I found in rfc1945 ... (in section 3.2.2):

   The canonical form for "http" URLs is obtained by converting any
   UPALPHA characters in host to their LOALPHA equivalent (hostnames are
   case-insensitive), eliding the [ ":" port ] if the port is 80, and
   replacing an empty abs_path with "/".  

In rfc2068 (3.2.3) we provide a definition of URI Comparison which is
probably a better approach.

Hence I think removal of 'canonical' from the authentication draft
will not change the intent and will align the documents.

Dave Morris

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Larry Masinter wrote:

> In general, URLs do _not_ have a canonical form. However, HTTP
> defines some equivalences for URLs (e.g., that http://host is 
> equivalent to http://host/, and by using the generic
> syntax for host names, the host part is case insensitive).
> 
> Some particular HTTP servers MAY define other equivalences,
> e.g., that http://host/dir is equivalent to http://host/dir/
> and to http://host/dir/index.html.
> 
> I'm less sure how equivalence is turned into canonicalization for
> the purpose of creating a 'canonical root', though.
> 
> Larry
> --
> http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter
>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Paul Leach [mailto:paulle@microsoft.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 1998 1:35 PM
> > To: 'David W. Morris'; http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com
> > Cc: http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com
> > Subject: RE: ``canonical'' root URL of a server?
> > 
> > 
> > I thought URLs had a caonical form -- bad chars coverted to %xx, etc. Maybe
> > it's in the URL RFC?
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David W. Morris [mailto:dwm@xpasc.com]
> > Sent: Friday, April 03, 1998 3:55 PM
> > 
> > Might be an artifact of moving the syntactical definition of a URL to be a
> > reference so that the definition of canonical got lost?
> > 
> > Dave Morris
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, 3 Apr 1998 Mike_Spreitzer.PARC@xerox.com wrote:
> > 
> > > What is the significance of including the word ``canonical'' in the
> > following
> > > sentence in draft-ietf-http-authentication-01 section 1.2?  The cited
> > section
> > > of the HTTP/1.1 draft defines the "root" URL of a server, but the word
> > > canonical doesn't appear there.  Is this an editorial bug in one spec or
> > the
> > > other?
> > > 
> > > ``The realm value (case-sensitive), in combination with the canonical root
> > URL
> > > (see section 5.1.2 of [2]) of the server being accessed, defines the
> > protection
> > > space.''
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
>

Received on Tuesday, 7 April 1998 17:22:37 UTC