Re: WebDAV and write access discovery

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 04:07:58PM +0200, Steinar Bang wrote:
...
> So that would avoid me having to send the body over twice, in the case
> of authentication of a PUT request, which is great. 
> 
> One thing I would like to do, is to find out if a file is writable
> when I load it.  Ie. I would like to do something like:
>  - GET a file
>  - immediately start a PUT of the file with the expect header in place
>  - if I get a "100 continue" response, set the file to be R/W,
>    otherwise mark it as read-only
> 
> However, in this case the client has no intention of actually sending
> the body, even if the server returns a "100 continue", and I'm unsure
> of what happens if it doesn't?  Will the 1.1 pipeline be blocked?
> Will a new request be taken to be an empty PUT body, and the file be
> overwritten with a file of 0 bytes?

The behaviour will be server-dependent I expect. (at least, since the
RFC doesn't cover this case, you can't rely on any particular behaviour)

> > The main problem with the Expect header is that it is an HTTP/1.1
> > construct that is not understood by old HTTP/1.0 servers and
> > proxies.
> 
> What's the risk with HTTP/1.0 servers in my case?  That the PUT
> request with an expect header will be taken as an actual PUT request
> with an empty request body, and the file get 0 bytes?

The problem is that HTTP/1.0 servers ignore the extension, so both
client and server block waiting for the other.

> Is this a real risk?  Are there any PUT enabled HTTP/1.0 servers out
> there?

Proxy servers are the big problem - they are mostly HTTP/1.0 compliant.

Regards,

joe

Received on Monday, 2 July 2001 10:36:11 UTC