Re: Nice

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Martin Thomson
<martin.thomson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16 August 2013 11:29, James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com> wrote:
>> That said, I'm thinking that this could easily be implemented as a
>> Prefer token per http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-snell-http-prefer-18
>
> I did consider Prefer when putting this together, and I almost used it
> (you'll notice that there is a nice+wait example in the doc already).
>
> The reason I didn't use Prefer is that my understanding is that Prefer
> is probably going to be ignored by intermediaries, since the
> formulation of Prefer is such that an origin server is where it is

>From Section 2:

  In various situations, a proxy might
  determine that it is capable of honoring
  a preference independently of the server
  to which the request has been directed.

;-)

> targeted.  I also saw "Preference-Applied" as being a little
> disingenuous in this context, despite on first blush appearing to be
> relevant, I just can't conceive of any value in anything other than
> the negative (that is, this preference was NOT applied).
>

The use of Preference-Applied is entirely optional and is only
required in certain specific situations (specifically, when the client
really needs to know whether the preference has been applied and is
unable to determine that in some other way. In the case of a "Prefer:
nice=3", I can't imagine that Preference-Applied would be necessary at
all... therefore, ignore it.

- James

> That said, it does fit from one perspective.  That is, this is an
> eminently ignorable header, and designed as such.

Received on Friday, 16 August 2013 18:49:27 UTC