RFC 10008: caching QUERY without re-sending the request body

Hi all,

I would like to make it possible for HTTP QUERY to have cache hits on servers and CDN's without always needing to send the full request body - so as to minimize network traffic on queries with large request bodies.

This could be achieved as follows. The client sends a Content-Digest (RFC 9530) of the request content with Expect: 100-continue (RFC 9110) and withholds the body. On a miss the cache the usual 100 (Continue) would be sent. On a cache hit, the server answers immediately and never sends 100 (Continue), so the body is never uploaded:

    QUERY /search HTTP/2
    Content-Type: application/sql
    Content-Digest: sha-256=:X48E9qOokqqrvdts8nOJRJN3OWDUoyWxBf7kbu9DBPE=:
    Expect: 100-continue

        (client withholds the request content)

    HTTP/2 200 OK
    Content-Type: application/json
    Cache-Status: ExampleCache; hit; detail=request-content-digest

        (result served from cache; the query body was never sent)

I would like to gauge from the group whether there is interest in solving this problem. If yes:

  1.
Is Expect: 100-continue the right primitive, or would a dedicated request precondition be cleaner?
  2.
Where should it live? Three options, and I'd welcome direction:
     *
revise RFC 10008 to fold it in;
     *
a short companion document that formally Updates RFC 10008;
     *
an independent extension.

A rough sketch (kramdown-rfc source) is here:
https://gist.github.com/jeswr/7425f74439733762eb347f0a0c199339

This idea was originally raised in the following issue: https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/3469

Kind Regards,
Jesse Wright
DPhil Computer Science
Jesus College
[cid:7a9e14d9-4d29-49d4-be33-293158b49d3b]

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