Re: i24: Requiring Allow in 405 responses

I'd note that the issue was raised because some people read the  
phrasing as requiring all possible methods to be sent, and certainly  
some implementations try to do this; e.g.,

   http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=32561
   http://oldsite.webdav.org/mod_dav/bugs/index.php3?id=134

IMO we need to clarify this text so it's unambiguous. I know people  
would *like* to depend upon the values in Allow as a complete set, but  
that's not what implementations do, and it's actually very hard to do  
in any case.

FWIW, I like "the" -> "a"; it's more elegant than my proposal. I'm  
less convinced that it's necessary / good to loosen the SHOULD on  
clients; this sort of thing is what SHOULD is for.

Cheers,


On 04/03/2008, at 3:28 AM, Mark Baker wrote:

>
> On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 11:19 AM, John Kemp <john@jkemp.net> wrote:
>>> I would say that "*the* set of methods" is clear enough; it doesn't
>>> allow a subset.
>>
>> You're right - so we could change the "the" to an "a" and be done?
>>
>> "The Allow entity-header field lists a set of methods supported by  
>> the
>>
>> resource identified by the Request-URI."
>
> Do we have to bother?  Even with "the", there's nothing preventing a
> server from changing the methods it supports from one minute to the
> next, and therefore no guarantee that "*the* set" is actually *the*
> set at any given point in time.
>
> Mark.
>


--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Tuesday, 4 March 2008 02:17:54 UTC