Re: Working Group Last Call: draft-ietf-httpbis-no-vary-search

Am 30.09.2025 um 05:20 schrieb Tommy Pauly:
> Hello HTTP,
> 
> This email starts a Working Group Last Call for draft-ietf-httpbis-no- 
> vary-search-03.
> ...

Below some feedback, ignoring the algorithms mostly (I'm not a fan of 
this specification style, as it makes this hard to review except for 
implementers).

Section 3:

"If present, the params entry's value MUST be either a boolean (Section 
3.3.6 of [STRUCTURED-FIELDS]) or an inner list (Section 3.1.1 of 
[STRUCTURED-FIELDS])." - maybe personal taste, but having varying 
datatypes for the same param feels wrong. Maybe use empty list instead 
of boolean.

That would change:

No-Vary-Search: params, except=("productId")

to

No-Vary-Search: params=(), except=("productId")

which would make things both more consistent and readable. Or even drop 
the "no params" syntax.

No-Vary-Search: except=("productId")

Also: this should say what format the contents of the inner list can 
have. (just stating it in the parsing algorithm is not suffient)


Section 5.3

Item 1: this seems to be a NO-OP given the Structured Field syntax.

Item 3: "Let keyBytesDecoded be the percent-decoding [WHATWG-URL] of 
keyBytes."

Structured Fields has a data type for strings containing non-ASCII 
characters.



Section 11.1:

STRUCTURED-FIELDS refers to an obsoleted version; updating this may also 
require updating deep links.



Editorial:

Section 1:

URL:

The introduction mixes "URI" and "URL"; that might be confusing to 
readers. For URI, please cite RFC 3986. (maybe also explain why both 
terms are needed)

"resource has multiple URLs" -> "when different URLs that only differ in 
certain query components identify the same resource"

"some or all parts of the query" -> "...query component"

query parameter key needs a reference

"do not semantically affect the served resource" -> "do not affect what 
resource is identified"

"raw output" -> "output" (maybe)




Nits:

Terminology:

header -> header field
once: header -> fierld value

see https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/pull/3267

The list in 10.1 looks weird



Best regards, Julian

Received on Wednesday, 1 October 2025 08:57:10 UTC