Re: Proposal: Is OPTIONS Safe? [#171]

I think it would be good to enumerate it in each method definition as  
well, to promote good practice in extension methods if nothing else.


On 27/07/2009, at 4:39 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:

> Mark Nottingham wrote:
>> No objections, and I note that 2616 already says in 9.1.2:
>> "Also, the methods OPTIONS and TRACE SHOULD NOT have side effects,  
>> and so are inherently idempotent."
>> Julian, please go ahead.
>> ...
>
> OK, the simplest way to fix this is to add OPTIONS and TRACE to the  
> enumeration in P2, 7.1.1, so that it becomes:
>
>   In particular, the convention has been established that the GET,
>   HEAD, OPTIONS, and TRACE methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of
>   taking an action other than retrieval.  These methods ought to be
>   considered "safe".  This allows user agents to represent other
>   methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a special way, so that the
>   user is made aware of the fact that a possibly unsafe action is  
> being
>   requested.
>
> (see <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/attachment/ticket/171/171.diff 
> >).
>
> An alternative requiring more work would be to add statements about  
> safeness and idempotency to each method description.
>
> In the absence of feedback I'll proceed with the simple solution  
> soonish.
>
> BR, Julian
>


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

Received on Wednesday, 29 July 2009 16:10:19 UTC