Re: OPTIONS and TRACE vis a vis CGI applications
Scott Lawrence (lawrence@agranat.com)
Thu, 12 Mar 1998 09:08:58 -0500 (EST)
On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, David W. Morris wrote:
> It is my sense from list postings that a TRACE or OPTIONS request which
> referenced a specific resource which a server handed to an external
> application such as a CGI program should be handed to that program
> for handling.
>
> That is:
> OPTIONS /cgi-bin/somescript HTTP/1.1
> or
> TRACE /cgi-bin/somescript HTTP/1.1
> should be handled by the application which would respond to a GET or HEAD
> of the same resource.
I would agree for OPTIONS, since it is probably the capabilities of the
CGI or other sub-server that the requestor is interested in (although my
experience has usually been that CGIs often respond as though the method
were GET or POST because the authors don't check).
I can't think of any reason why TRACE would require the participation of
the resource - it's purpose is just to reflect the headers as received,
and the server itself can do that just fine.