INTERNET-DRAFT Mykyta Yevstifeyev
Intended Status: Standards Track November 21, 2010
Expires: May 25, 2011
'Some Headers Not Recognized' HTTP Status and
'Headers-Not-Recognized' HTTP Header Field
<draft-yevstifeyev-http-headers-not-recognized-01>
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
Copyright and License Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Mykyta Yevstifeyev Expires May 25, 2011 [Page 1]
INTERNET DRAFT 'Headers Not Recognized' HTTP Status November 21, 2010
Abstract
This document defines mechanism which allows HTTP servers to notify
clients about not recognized or not proceed headers.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.1 Conformance Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.2 Syntax Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.3 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 General Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3 Technical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1 Model of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2 Technical Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2.1 'Some Headers Not Recognized' Status . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2.2 'Headers-Not-Recognized' Header Field . . . . . . . . . 4
4 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1 'Some Headers Not Recognized' Status Code . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2 'Headers-Not-Recognized' Header Field . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Author's Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Mykyta Yevstifeyev Expires May 25, 2011 [Page 2]
INTERNET DRAFT 'Headers Not Recognized' HTTP Status November 21, 2010
1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation
HTTP is one of the most widely-used protocols in the Internet. One of
the things which made it so popular is extensibility. One can easily
add any header to the HTTP message. However, servers are not able to
support all the HTTP headers. Generally, if a server does not
recognize the header, it simply ignores it. The client is not
notified about not processed headers.
This document proposes mechanism which allows servers to notify
clients about not processes or not recognized headers.
The proposal is to send a response with definite status code to the
client if one or more headers of request were not processed. This
document defines 'Some Headers Not Recognized' HTTP status to be used
in such occasions and 'Headers-Not-Recognized' Headers Field.
1.2 Conventions
1.2.1 Conformance Criteria
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
1.2.2 Syntax Notation
This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
notation of [RFC5234].
The following core rules are included by reference, as defined in
[RFC5234], Appendix B.1: ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return), CRLF
(CR LF), CTL (controls), DIGIT (decimal 0-9), DQUOTE (double quote),
HEXDIG (hexadecimal 0-9/A-F/a-f), LF (line feed), OCTET (any 8-bit
sequence of data), SP (space), HTAB (horizontal tab), CHAR (any US-
ASCII character), VCHAR (any visible US-ASCII character), and WSP
(whitespace).
1.2.3 Terminology
The terms user agent, client, server, proxy, and origin server have
the same meaning as in the HTTP/1.1 specification ([RFC2616], Section
1.3).
Mykyta Yevstifeyev Expires May 25, 2011 [Page 3]
INTERNET DRAFT 'Headers Not Recognized' HTTP Status November 21, 2010
2 General Overview
This section gives a brief overview of issues discussed by this
document.
'Some Headers Not Recognized' HTTP status SHOULD be sent if server
does not support one or more headers of request. Information about
not recognized headers MUST be put into the header field 'Headers-
Not-Recognized'.
3 Technical Overview
3.1 Model of Work
If a server receives request with unknown (for it) headers, it SHOULD
send a response with 'Some Headers Not Recognized' status.
Information about what headers were not recognized MUST be put into
the 'Headers-Not-Recognized' headers field in this occasion. If a
client receives such a response, it SHOULD avoid sending requests
with headers mentioned in the body of response.
3.2 Technical Description
3.2.1 'Some Headers Not Recognized' Status
'Some Headers Not Recognized' status is Informational. The status
code 103 has been assigned to be used with this status. If a server
sends a response with aforementioned status, it MUST continue
processing of client's request.
3.2.2 'Headers-Not-Recognized' Header Field
If a response with 'Some Headers Not Recognized' status is sent,
information about what headers were not recognized MUST be put into
the 'Headers-Not-Recognized' header field. This header field has the
following format:
headers_not_recognized = header_name [*("," header name)]
header_name = <name of not recognized header>
Mykyta Yevstifeyev Expires May 25, 2011 [Page 4]
INTERNET DRAFT 'Headers Not Recognized' HTTP Status November 21, 2010
4 IANA Considerations
4.1 'Some Headers Not Recognized' Status Code
HTTP status code registry should be updates by the following
registration:
Value: 103
Description: Some Headers Not Recognized
Specification document: this specification
4.2 'Headers-Not-Recognized' Header Field
The permanent message header field registry should be updated with
the following registration:
Header field name: Headers-Not-Recognized
Applicable protocol: http
Status: standard
Specification document: this specification
5 Security Considerations
Security considerations are not discussed by this document.
6 Normative References
[RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed., and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for
Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January
2008.
Mykyta Yevstifeyev Expires May 25, 2011 [Page 5]
INTERNET DRAFT 'Headers Not Recognized' HTTP Status November 21, 2010
Author's Addresses
Mykyta Yevstifeyev
8 Kuzovkov St., flat 25
Kotovsk, Ukraine
EMail: evnikita2@gmail.com
Mykyta Yevstifeyev Expires May 25, 2011 [Page 6]
