Re: Sections 3.3.1 and 5.1
Ben Laurie (ben@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk)
Fri, 31 May 1996 23:02:09 +0100 (BST)
Paul Leach wrote:
>
>
>
> >----------
> >From: Ben Laurie[SMTP:ben@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk]
> >Subject: Re: Sections 3.3.1 and 5.1
> >
> >
> >Proxies are permitted to rewrite internally. I understand the reasoning
> >but
> >it seems to me that this should be a restrictions on URLs (that is,
> >that they
> >are always in their canonical form) rather than on proxies.
>
> That "permission" is actually ooutside the scope of the spec -- any HTTP
> app is permitted to do anything it wants internally as long as it
> conforms to the requirements of the protocol. That would perhaps be
> clearer if the sentence
>
> Proxies MAY transform the Request-URI for internal processing purposes,
> but MUST NOT send such a transformed Request-URI in forwarded requests.
>
>
> were moved into the Note: that immediately followed (and the MAY and
> MUST NOT changed to lower case, since MAY doesn't apply to the protocol
> and the MUST NOT is redundant with the proscription on rewriting
> expressed earlier in that section).
Agreed (given the following), except redundancy shouldn't cause case changes.
>
> You suggestion about requiring canonical form has the right intent, but
> since many existing clients don't send in canonical form, and the
> purpose we were seeking (authentication) only requires that the URLs not
> be modified, it seemed like an unnecesary burden to require canonical
> form.
Surely this is easy; require canonical form in HTTP/1.1 clients and note that
HTTP/1.0- clients don't do it. Then maybe by 2.0 we can insist on canonical
form.
Cheers,
Ben.
>
> Paul
--
Ben Laurie Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435
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