Re: Multiple Range headers in an HTTP request

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:

> On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:20:09 +0200, Raphaël Troncy <Raphael.Troncy@cwi.nl> 
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> We knew that the latest blog post from Silvia is brilliant :-)
>> http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/09/08/uri-fragments-vs-uri-queries-for-media-fragment-addressing/
>> 
>> It has triggered some interesting discussions too (read the comments). One 
>> of them is the reason for my question. Philip Jägenstedt wrote
>> "I also would be surprised if there wasn?t a lot of server software that 
>> assumes that there will be at most 1 Range HTTP header and misbehaves 
>> otherwise."
>> 
>> A question for you Yves:
>>   - is it allowed to have multiple Range headers in a single HTTP request?
>>   - how the server is supposed to interpret it if this is the case?
>>     a) Ignore the Range request and serve the whole content
>>     b) Pick the first Range and serves it
>>     c) Pick a random Range among the ones specified and serves it
>>     d) Undefined :-(
>> Cheers.
>>
>>   Raphaël
>> 
>
> I don't know what the specs say, but I did a little experiment with nc 
> (netcat):
>
> A:
> Range: bytes=0-99
>
> B:
> Range: bytes=0-99
> Range: bytes=100-199
>
> C:
> Range: bytes=0-99
> Range: seconds=10-20
>
> D:
> Range: seconds=10-20
> Range: bytes=0-99
>
> Apache 2.2:
> A: Content-Range: bytes 0-99
> B: Content-Range: bytes 0-99 (multipart)
> C: Content-Range: bytes 0-99 (multipart)
> D: 200 OK (full resource)
>
> Conclusion: quite sane, but order matters and I don't know why I get a 
> multipart response.

C and D should have been either full resource or the single byte fragment, 
but not multipart.

> IIS 5.0:
> A: Content-Range: bytes 0-99
> B: 200 OK (full resource)
> C: 200 OK (full resource)
> D: 200 OK (full resource)
>
> Conclusion: completely broken with multiple Range headers.
Well, no that's perfectly valid to answer with the full resource when 
mutiple ranges are requested.

-- 
Baroula que barouleras, au tiéu toujou t'entourneras.

         ~~Yves

Received on Thursday, 10 September 2009 09:41:23 UTC