RE: PROPOSAL: content sniffing [#155]

Julian Reschke wrote:
> 3.2.1 Type
> 
> When an entity-body is included with a message, the data type of that
> body is declared by the header fields Content-Type and Content-Encoding.
> These define a two-layer, ordered encoding model:
> 
>    entity-body := Content-Encoding( Content-Type( data ) )
> 
> Content-Type specifies the media type of the underlying data.
> Content-Encoding may be used to indicate any additional content codings
> applied to the data, usually for the purpose of data compression, that
> are a property of the requested resource. There is no default encoding.
> 
> Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a
> Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If the
> media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD treat it as type
> "application/octet-stream".

My suggestion is:

1. Remove 3.2.1 completely.
2. Remove all references to 3.2.1 (especially the one in section 5.9).
3. Add the statement "A message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a
Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body" to section
5.9.

Since the "MUST" requirement for Content-Encoding is in 5.5, it makes sense
to have the "SHOULD" requirement for Content-Type in 5.9. And, the
specification should avoid duplication as much as possible.

Regards,
Brian

Received on Thursday, 9 April 2009 14:57:01 UTC