HTTP Working Group R. Fielding, Ed.
Internet-Draft Adobe
Obsoletes: 2818, 7230, 7231, 7232, 7233, 7235, M. Nottingham, Ed.
7538, 7615, 7694 (if approved) Fastly
Updates: 3864 (if approved) J. Reschke, Ed.
Intended status: Standards Track greenbytes
Expires: January 27, 2022 July 26, 2021
HTTP Semantics
draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-17
Abstract
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless application-
level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypertext information
systems. This document describes the overall architecture of HTTP,
establishes common terminology, and defines aspects of the protocol
that are shared by all versions. In this definition are core
protocol elements, extensibility mechanisms, and the "http" and
"https" Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) schemes.
This document updates RFC 3864 and obsoletes RFC 2818, RFC 7231, RFC
7232, RFC 7233, RFC 7235, RFC 7538, RFC 7615, RFC 7694, and portions
of RFC 7230.
Editorial Note
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTP working group
mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org), which is archived at
.
Working Group information can be found at ;
source code and issues list for this draft can be found at
.
The changes in this draft are summarized in Appendix C.18.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1. Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2. History and Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3. Core Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4. Specifications Obsoleted by this Document . . . . . . . . 12
2. Conformance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.1. Syntax Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2. Requirements Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
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2.3. Length Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4. Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5. Protocol Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3. Terminology and Core Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.1. Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2. Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.3. Connections, Clients and Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.4. Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.5. User Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.6. Origin Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.7. Intermediaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.8. Caches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.9. Example Message Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4. Identifiers in HTTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.1. URI References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2. HTTP-Related URI Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.2.1. http URI Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2.2. https URI Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2.3. http(s) Normalization and Comparison . . . . . . . . 26
4.2.4. Deprecation of userinfo in http(s) URIs . . . . . . . 27
4.2.5. http(s) References with Fragment Identifiers . . . . 28
4.3. Authoritative Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.3.1. URI Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.3.2. http origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.3.3. https origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.3.4. https certificate verification . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.3.5. IP-ID reference identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5. Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.1. Field Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.2. Field Lines and Combined Field Value . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.3. Field Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.4. Field Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.5. Field Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.6. Common Rules for Defining Field Values . . . . . . . . . 37
5.6.1. Lists (#rule ABNF Extension) . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.6.1.1. Sender Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.6.1.2. Recipient Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.6.2. Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.6.3. Whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.6.4. Quoted Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.6.5. Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.6.6. Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5.6.7. Date/Time Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6. Message Abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.1. Framing and Completeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.2. Control Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
6.3. Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.4. Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
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6.4.1. Content Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6.4.2. Identifying Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.5. Trailer Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.5.1. Limitations on use of Trailers . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.5.2. Processing Trailer Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
7. Routing HTTP Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7.1. Determining the Target Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7.2. Host and :authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
7.3. Routing Inbound Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
7.3.1. To a Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
7.3.2. To a Proxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.3.3. To the Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.4. Rejecting Misdirected Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.5. Response Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.6. Message Forwarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.6.1. Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7.6.2. Max-Forwards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
7.6.3. Via . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7.7. Message Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
7.8. Upgrade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
8. Representation Data and Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8.1. Representation Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8.2. Representation Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8.3. Content-Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
8.3.1. Media Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
8.3.2. Charset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
8.3.3. Multipart Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.4. Content-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.4.1. Content Codings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
8.4.1.1. Compress Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.4.1.2. Deflate Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.4.1.3. Gzip Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.5. Content-Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.5.1. Language Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.6. Content-Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
8.7. Content-Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.8. Validator Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.8.1. Weak versus Strong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
8.8.2. Last-Modified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
8.8.2.1. Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
8.8.2.2. Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
8.8.3. ETag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
8.8.3.1. Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
8.8.3.2. Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.8.3.3. Example: Entity-Tags Varying on Content-Negotiated
Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.8.4. When to Use Entity-Tags and Last-Modified Dates . . . 79
9. Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
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9.1. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
9.2. Common Method Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
9.2.1. Safe Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
9.2.2. Idempotent Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
9.2.3. Methods and Caching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
9.3. Method Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
9.3.1. GET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
9.3.2. HEAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
9.3.3. POST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
9.3.4. PUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
9.3.5. DELETE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
9.3.6. CONNECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
9.3.7. OPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
9.3.8. TRACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
10. Message Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
10.1. Request Context Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
10.1.1. Expect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
10.1.2. From . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
10.1.3. Referer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
10.1.4. TE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
10.1.5. Trailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10.1.6. User-Agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10.2. Response Context Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
10.2.1. Allow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
10.2.2. Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
10.2.3. Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
10.2.4. Retry-After . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10.2.5. Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
11. HTTP Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
11.1. Authentication Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
11.2. Authentication Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
11.3. Challenge and Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
11.4. Credentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
11.5. Establishing a Protection Space (Realm) . . . . . . . . 108
11.6. Authenticating Users to Origin Servers . . . . . . . . . 109
11.6.1. WWW-Authenticate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
11.6.2. Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
11.6.3. Authentication-Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
11.7. Authenticating Clients to Proxies . . . . . . . . . . . 111
11.7.1. Proxy-Authenticate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
11.7.2. Proxy-Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
11.7.3. Proxy-Authentication-Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
12. Content Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
12.1. Proactive Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
12.2. Reactive Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
12.3. Request Content Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
12.4. Content Negotiation Field Features . . . . . . . . . . . 115
12.4.1. Absence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
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12.4.2. Quality Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
12.4.3. Wildcard Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
12.5. Content Negotiation Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
12.5.1. Accept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
12.5.2. Accept-Charset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
12.5.3. Accept-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
12.5.4. Accept-Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
12.5.5. Vary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
13. Conditional Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
13.1. Preconditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
13.1.1. If-Match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
13.1.2. If-None-Match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
13.1.3. If-Modified-Since . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
13.1.4. If-Unmodified-Since . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
13.1.5. If-Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
13.2. Evaluation of Preconditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
13.2.1. When to Evaluate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
13.2.2. Precedence of Preconditions . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
14. Range Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
14.1. Range Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
14.1.1. Range Specifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
14.1.2. Byte Ranges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
14.2. Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
14.3. Accept-Ranges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
14.4. Content-Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
14.5. Partial PUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
14.6. Media Type multipart/byteranges . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
15. Status Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
15.1. Overview of Status Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
15.2. Informational 1xx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
15.2.1. 100 Continue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
15.2.2. 101 Switching Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
15.3. Successful 2xx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
15.3.1. 200 OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
15.3.2. 201 Created . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
15.3.3. 202 Accepted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
15.3.4. 203 Non-Authoritative Information . . . . . . . . . 150
15.3.5. 204 No Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
15.3.6. 205 Reset Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
15.3.7. 206 Partial Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
15.3.7.1. Single Part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
15.3.7.2. Multiple Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
15.3.7.3. Combining Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
15.4. Redirection 3xx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
15.4.1. 300 Multiple Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
15.4.2. 301 Moved Permanently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
15.4.3. 302 Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
15.4.4. 303 See Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
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15.4.5. 304 Not Modified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
15.4.6. 305 Use Proxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
15.4.7. 306 (Unused) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
15.4.8. 307 Temporary Redirect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
15.4.9. 308 Permanent Redirect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
15.5. Client Error 4xx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
15.5.1. 400 Bad Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
15.5.2. 401 Unauthorized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
15.5.3. 402 Payment Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.5.4. 403 Forbidden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.5.5. 404 Not Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.5.6. 405 Method Not Allowed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
15.5.7. 406 Not Acceptable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
15.5.8. 407 Proxy Authentication Required . . . . . . . . . 164
15.5.9. 408 Request Timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
15.5.10. 409 Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
15.5.11. 410 Gone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
15.5.12. 411 Length Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
15.5.13. 412 Precondition Failed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
15.5.14. 413 Content Too Large . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
15.5.15. 414 URI Too Long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
15.5.16. 415 Unsupported Media Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
15.5.17. 416 Range Not Satisfiable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
15.5.18. 417 Expectation Failed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
15.5.19. 418 (Unused) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.5.20. 421 Misdirected Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.5.21. 422 Unprocessable Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.5.22. 426 Upgrade Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.6. Server Error 5xx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
15.6.1. 500 Internal Server Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
15.6.2. 501 Not Implemented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
15.6.3. 502 Bad Gateway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
15.6.4. 503 Service Unavailable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
15.6.5. 504 Gateway Timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
15.6.6. 505 HTTP Version Not Supported . . . . . . . . . . . 170
16. Extending HTTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
16.1. Method Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
16.1.1. Method Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
16.1.2. Considerations for New Methods . . . . . . . . . . . 171
16.2. Status Code Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
16.2.1. Status Code Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
16.2.2. Considerations for New Status Codes . . . . . . . . 173
16.3. Field Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
16.3.1. Field Name Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
16.3.2. Considerations for New Fields . . . . . . . . . . . 175
16.3.2.1. Considerations for New Field Names . . . . . . . 176
16.3.2.2. Considerations for New Field Values . . . . . . 177
16.4. Authentication Scheme Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . 178
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16.4.1. Authentication Scheme Registry . . . . . . . . . . . 178
16.4.2. Considerations for New Authentication Schemes . . . 178
16.5. Range Unit Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
16.5.1. Range Unit Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
16.5.2. Considerations for New Range Units . . . . . . . . . 180
16.6. Content Coding Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
16.6.1. Content Coding Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
16.6.2. Considerations for New Content Codings . . . . . . . 181
16.7. Upgrade Token Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
17. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
17.1. Establishing Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
17.2. Risks of Intermediaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
17.3. Attacks Based on File and Path Names . . . . . . . . . . 184
17.4. Attacks Based on Command, Code, or Query Injection . . . 184
17.5. Attacks via Protocol Element Length . . . . . . . . . . 185
17.6. Attacks using Shared-dictionary Compression . . . . . . 186
17.7. Disclosure of Personal Information . . . . . . . . . . . 186
17.8. Privacy of Server Log Information . . . . . . . . . . . 186
17.9. Disclosure of Sensitive Information in URIs . . . . . . 187
17.10. Application Handling of Field Names . . . . . . . . . . 187
17.11. Disclosure of Fragment after Redirects . . . . . . . . . 188
17.12. Disclosure of Product Information . . . . . . . . . . . 189
17.13. Browser Fingerprinting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
17.14. Validator Retention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
17.15. Denial-of-Service Attacks Using Range . . . . . . . . . 190
17.16. Authentication Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
17.16.1. Confidentiality of Credentials . . . . . . . . . . 191
17.16.2. Credentials and Idle Clients . . . . . . . . . . . 191
17.16.3. Protection Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
17.16.4. Additional Response Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
18. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
18.1. URI Scheme Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
18.2. Method Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
18.3. Status Code Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
18.4. Field Name Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
18.5. Authentication Scheme Registration . . . . . . . . . . . 197
18.6. Content Coding Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
18.7. Range Unit Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
18.8. Media Type Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
18.9. Port Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
18.10. Upgrade Token Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
19. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
19.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
19.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Appendix A. Collected ABNF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Appendix B. Changes from previous RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
B.1. Changes from RFC 2818 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
B.2. Changes from RFC 7230 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
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B.3. Changes from RFC 7231 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
B.4. Changes from RFC 7232 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
B.5. Changes from RFC 7233 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
B.6. Changes from RFC 7235 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
B.7. Changes from RFC 7538 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
B.8. Changes from RFC 7615 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
B.9. Changes from RFC 7694 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Appendix C. Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
C.1. Between RFC723x and draft 00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
C.2. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-00 . . . . . . . . . . 216
C.3. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-01 . . . . . . . . . . 216
C.4. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-02 . . . . . . . . . . 218
C.5. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-03 . . . . . . . . . . 219
C.6. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-04 . . . . . . . . . . 219
C.7. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-05 . . . . . . . . . . 220
C.8. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-06 . . . . . . . . . . 221
C.9. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-07 . . . . . . . . . . 223
C.10. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-08 . . . . . . . . . . 224
C.11. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-09 . . . . . . . . . . 225
C.12. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-10 . . . . . . . . . . 225
C.13. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-11 . . . . . . . . . . 227
C.14. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-12 . . . . . . . . . . 227
C.15. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-13 . . . . . . . . . . 229
C.16. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-14 . . . . . . . . . . 230
C.17. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-15 . . . . . . . . . . 232
C.18. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-16 . . . . . . . . . . 233
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a family of stateless,
application-level, request/response protocols that share a generic
interface, extensible semantics, and self-descriptive messages to
enable flexible interaction with network-based hypertext information
systems.
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HTTP hides the details of how a service is implemented by presenting
a uniform interface to clients that is independent of the types of
resources provided. Likewise, servers do not need to be aware of
each client's purpose: a request can be considered in isolation
rather than being associated with a specific type of client or a
predetermined sequence of application steps. This allows general-
purpose implementations to be used effectively in many different
contexts, reduces interaction complexity, and enables independent
evolution over time.
HTTP is also designed for use as an intermediation protocol, wherein
proxies and gateways can translate non-HTTP information systems into
a more generic interface.
One consequence of this flexibility is that the protocol cannot be
defined in terms of what occurs behind the interface. Instead, we
are limited to defining the syntax of communication, the intent of
received communication, and the expected behavior of recipients. If
the communication is considered in isolation, then successful actions
ought to be reflected in corresponding changes to the observable
interface provided by servers. However, since multiple clients might
act in parallel and perhaps at cross-purposes, we cannot require that
such changes be observable beyond the scope of a single response.
1.2. History and Evolution
HTTP has been the primary information transfer protocol for the World
Wide Web since its introduction in 1990. It began as a trivial
mechanism for low-latency requests, with a single method (GET) to
request transfer of a presumed hypertext document identified by a
given pathname. As the Web grew, HTTP was extended to enclose
requests and responses within messages, transfer arbitrary data
formats using MIME-like media types, and route requests through
intermediaries. These protocols were eventually defined as HTTP/0.9
and HTTP/1.0 (see [HTTP/1.0]).
HTTP/1.1 was designed to refine the protocol's features while
retaining compatibility with the existing text-based messaging
syntax, improving its interoperability, scalability, and robustness
across the Internet. This included length-based data delimiters for
both fixed and dynamic (chunked) content, a consistent framework for
content negotiation, opaque validators for conditional requests,
cache controls for better cache consistency, range requests for
partial updates, and default persistent connections. HTTP/1.1 was
introduced in 1995 and published on the standards track in 1997
[RFC2068], revised in 1999 [RFC2616], and revised again in 2014
([RFC7230] – [RFC7235]).
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HTTP/2 ([HTTP/2]) introduced a multiplexed session layer on top of
the existing TLS and TCP protocols for exchanging concurrent HTTP
messages with efficient field compression and server push. HTTP/3
([HTTP/3]) provides greater independence for concurrent messages by
using QUIC as a secure multiplexed transport over UDP instead of TCP.
All three major versions of HTTP rely on the semantics defined by
this document. They have not obsoleted each other because each one
has specific benefits and limitations depending on the context of
use. Implementations are expected to choose the most appropriate
transport and messaging syntax for their particular context.
This revision of HTTP separates the definition of semantics (this
document) and caching ([CACHING]) from the current HTTP/1.1 messaging
syntax ([HTTP/1.1]) to allow each major protocol version to progress
independently while referring to the same core semantics.
1.3. Core Semantics
HTTP provides a uniform interface for interacting with a resource
(Section 3.1) -- regardless of its type, nature, or implementation --
by sending messages that manipulate or transfer representations
(Section 3.2).
Each message is either a request or a response. A client constructs
request messages that communicate its intentions and routes those
messages toward an identified origin server. A server listens for
requests, parses each message received, interprets the message
semantics in relation to the identified target resource, and responds
to that request with one or more response messages. The client
examines received responses to see if its intentions were carried
out, determining what to do next based on the status codes and
content received.
HTTP semantics include the intentions defined by each request method
(Section 9), extensions to those semantics that might be described in
request header fields, status codes that describe the response
(Section 15), and other control data and resource metadata that might
be given in response fields.
Semantics also include representation metadata that describe how
content is intended to be interpreted by a recipient, request header
fields that might influence content selection, and the various
selection algorithms that are collectively referred to as _content
negotiation_ (Section 12).
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1.4. Specifications Obsoleted by this Document
This document obsoletes the following specifications:
+--------------------------------------------+-----------+---------+
| Title | Reference | Changes |
+--------------------------------------------+-----------+---------+
| HTTP Over TLS | [RFC2818] | B.1 |
| HTTP/1.1 Message Syntax and Routing [*] | [RFC7230] | B.2 |
| HTTP/1.1 Semantics and Content | [RFC7231] | B.3 |
| HTTP/1.1 Conditional Requests | [RFC7232] | B.4 |
| HTTP/1.1 Range Requests | [RFC7233] | B.5 |
| HTTP/1.1 Authentication | [RFC7235] | B.6 |
| HTTP Status Code 308 (Permanent Redirect) | [RFC7538] | B.7 |
| HTTP Authentication-Info and Proxy- | [RFC7615] | B.8 |
| Authentication-Info Response Header Fields | | |
| HTTP Client-Initiated Content-Encoding | [RFC7694] | B.9 |
+--------------------------------------------+-----------+---------+
Table 1
[*] This document only obsoletes the portions of RFC 7230 that are
independent of the HTTP/1.1 messaging syntax and connection
management; the remaining bits of RFC 7230 are obsoleted by
"HTTP/1.1" [HTTP/1.1].
2. Conformance
2.1. Syntax Notation
This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
notation of [RFC5234], extended with the notation for case-
sensitivity in strings defined in [RFC7405].
It also uses a list extension, defined in Section 5.6.1, that allows
for compact definition of comma-separated lists using a "#" operator
(similar to how the "*" operator indicates repetition). Appendix A
shows the collected grammar with all list operators expanded to
standard ABNF notation.
As a convention, ABNF rule names prefixed with "obs-" denote
"obsolete" grammar rules that appear for historical reasons.
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The following core rules are included by reference, as defined in
Appendix B.1 of [RFC5234]: 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), HTAB (horizontal tab), LF
(line feed), OCTET (any 8-bit sequence of data), SP (space), and
VCHAR (any visible US-ASCII character).
Section 5.6 defines some generic syntactic components for field
values.
This specification uses the terms "character", "character encoding
scheme", "charset", and "protocol element" as they are defined in
[RFC6365].
2.2. Requirements Notation
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
This specification targets conformance criteria according to the role
of a participant in HTTP communication. Hence, requirements are
placed on senders, recipients, clients, servers, user agents,
intermediaries, origin servers, proxies, gateways, or caches,
depending on what behavior is being constrained by the requirement.
Additional requirements are placed on implementations, resource
owners, and protocol element registrations when they apply beyond the
scope of a single communication.
The verb "generate" is used instead of "send" where a requirement
applies only to implementations that create the protocol element,
rather than an implementation that forwards a received element
downstream.
An implementation is considered conformant if it complies with all of
the requirements associated with the roles it partakes in HTTP.
A sender MUST NOT generate protocol elements that do not match the
grammar defined by the corresponding ABNF rules. Within a given
message, a sender MUST NOT generate protocol elements or syntax
alternatives that are only allowed to be generated by participants in
other roles (i.e., a role that the sender does not have for that
message).
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Conformance to HTTP includes both conformance to the particular
messaging syntax of the protocol version in use and conformance to
the semantics of protocol elements sent. For example, a client that
claims conformance to HTTP/1.1 but fails to recognize the features
required of HTTP/1.1 recipients will fail to interoperate with
servers that adjust their responses in accordance with those claims.
Features that reflect user choices, such as content negotiation and
user-selected extensions, can impact application behavior beyond the
protocol stream; sending protocol elements that inaccurately reflect
a user's choices will confuse the user and inhibit choice.
When an implementation fails semantic conformance, recipients of that
implementation's messages will eventually develop workarounds to
adjust their behavior accordingly. A recipient MAY employ such
workarounds while remaining conformant to this protocol if the
workarounds are limited to the implementations at fault. For
example, servers often scan portions of the User-Agent field value,
and user agents often scan the Server field value, to adjust their
own behavior with respect to known bugs or poorly chosen defaults.
2.3. Length Requirements
A recipient SHOULD parse a received protocol element defensively,
with only marginal expectations that the element will conform to its
ABNF grammar and fit within a reasonable buffer size.
HTTP does not have specific length limitations for many of its
protocol elements because the lengths that might be appropriate will
vary widely, depending on the deployment context and purpose of the
implementation. Hence, interoperability between senders and
recipients depends on shared expectations regarding what is a
reasonable length for each protocol element. Furthermore, what is
commonly understood to be a reasonable length for some protocol
elements has changed over the course of the past two decades of HTTP
use and is expected to continue changing in the future.
At a minimum, a recipient MUST be able to parse and process protocol
element lengths that are at least as long as the values that it
generates for those same protocol elements in other messages. For
example, an origin server that publishes very long URI references to
its own resources needs to be able to parse and process those same
references when received as a target URI.
Many received protocol elements are only parsed to the extent
necessary to identify and forward that element downstream. For
example, an intermediary might parse a received field into its field
name and field value components, but then forward the field without
further parsing inside the field value.
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2.4. Error Handling
A recipient MUST interpret a received protocol element according to
the semantics defined for it by this specification, including
extensions to this specification, unless the recipient has determined
(through experience or configuration) that the sender incorrectly
implements what is implied by those semantics. For example, an
origin server might disregard the contents of a received
Accept-Encoding header field if inspection of the User-Agent header
field indicates a specific implementation version that is known to
fail on receipt of certain content codings.
Unless noted otherwise, a recipient MAY attempt to recover a usable
protocol element from an invalid construct. HTTP does not define
specific error handling mechanisms except when they have a direct
impact on security, since different applications of the protocol
require different error handling strategies. For example, a Web
browser might wish to transparently recover from a response where the
Location header field doesn't parse according to the ABNF, whereas a
systems control client might consider any form of error recovery to
be dangerous.
Some requests can be automatically retried by a client in the event
of an underlying connection failure, as described in Section 9.2.2.
2.5. Protocol Version
HTTP's version number consists of two decimal digits separated by a
"." (period or decimal point). The first digit ("major version")
indicates the messaging syntax, whereas the second digit ("minor
version") indicates the highest minor version within that major
version to which the sender is conformant (able to understand for
future communication).
While HTTP's core semantics don't change between protocol versions,
the expression of them "on the wire" can change, and so the HTTP
version number changes when incompatible changes are made to the wire
format. Additionally, HTTP allows incremental, backwards-compatible
changes to be made to the protocol without changing its version
through the use of defined extension points (Section 16).
The protocol version as a whole indicates the sender's conformance
with the set of requirements laid out in that version's corresponding
specification of HTTP. For example, the version "HTTP/1.1" is
defined by the combined specifications of this document, "HTTP
Caching" [CACHING], and "HTTP/1.1" [HTTP/1.1].
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HTTP's major version number is incremented when an incompatible
message syntax is introduced. The minor number is incremented when
changes made to the protocol have the effect of adding to the message
semantics or implying additional capabilities of the sender.
The minor version advertises the sender's communication capabilities
even when the sender is only using a backwards-compatible subset of
the protocol, thereby letting the recipient know that more advanced
features can be used in response (by servers) or in future requests
(by clients).
When a major version of HTTP does not define any minor versions, the
minor version "0" is implied. The "0" is used when referring to that
protocol within elements that require a minor version identifier.
3. Terminology and Core Concepts
HTTP was created for the World Wide Web (WWW) architecture and has
evolved over time to support the scalability needs of a worldwide
hypertext system. Much of that architecture is reflected in the
terminology used to define HTTP.
3.1. Resources
The target of an HTTP request is called a _resource_. HTTP does not
limit the nature of a resource; it merely defines an interface that
might be used to interact with resources. Most resources are
identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), as described in
Section 4.
One design goal of HTTP is to separate resource identification from
request semantics, which is made possible by vesting the request
semantics in the request method (Section 9) and a few request-
modifying header fields. A resource cannot treat a request in a
manner inconsistent with the semantics of the method of the request.
For example, though the URI of a resource might imply semantics that
are not safe, a client can expect the resource to avoid actions that
are unsafe when processing a request with a safe method (see
Section 9.2.1).
HTTP relies upon the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) standard [URI]
to indicate the target resource (Section 7.1) and relationships
between resources.
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3.2. Representations
A _representation_ is information that is intended to reflect a past,
current, or desired state of a given resource, in a format that can
be readily communicated via the protocol. A representation consists
of a set of representation metadata and a potentially unbounded
stream of representation data (Section 8).
HTTP allows "information hiding" behind its uniform interface by
defining communication with respect to a transferable representation
of the resource state, rather than transferring the resource itself.
This allows the resource identified by a URI to be anything,
including temporal functions like "the current weather in Laguna
Beach", while potentially providing information that represents that
resource at the time a message is generated [REST].
The uniform interface is similar to a window through which one can
observe and act upon a thing only through the communication of
messages to an independent actor on the other side. A shared
abstraction is needed to represent ("take the place of") the current
or desired state of that thing in our communications. When a
representation is hypertext, it can provide both a representation of
the resource state and processing instructions that help guide the
recipient's future interactions.
A target resource might be provided with, or be capable of
generating, multiple representations that are each intended to
reflect the resource's current state. An algorithm, usually based on
content negotiation (Section 12), would be used to select one of
those representations as being most applicable to a given request.
This _selected representation_ provides the data and metadata for
evaluating conditional requests (Section 13) and constructing the
content for 200 (OK), 206 (Partial Content), and 304 (Not Modified)
responses to GET (Section 9.3.1).
3.3. Connections, Clients and Servers
HTTP is a client/server protocol that operates over a reliable
transport- or session-layer _connection_.
An HTTP _client_ is a program that establishes a connection to a
server for the purpose of sending one or more HTTP requests. An HTTP
_server_ is a program that accepts connections in order to service
HTTP requests by sending HTTP responses.
The terms "client" and "server" refer only to the roles that these
programs perform for a particular connection. The same program might
act as a client on some connections and a server on others.
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HTTP is defined as a stateless protocol, meaning that each request
message's semantics can be understood in isolation, and that the
relationship between connections and messages on them has no impact
on the interpretation of those messages. For example, a CONNECT
request (Section 9.3.6) or a request with the Upgrade header field
(Section 7.8) can occur at any time, not just in the first message on
a connection. Many implementations depend on HTTP's stateless design
in order to reuse proxied connections or dynamically load balance
requests across multiple servers.
As a result, a server MUST NOT assume that two requests on the same
connection are from the same user agent unless the connection is
secured and specific to that agent. Some non-standard HTTP
extensions (e.g., [RFC4559]) have been known to violate this
requirement, resulting in security and interoperability problems.
3.4. Messages
HTTP is a stateless request/response protocol for exchanging
_messages_ across a connection. The terms _sender_ and _recipient_
refer to any implementation that sends or receives a given message,
respectively.
A client sends requests to a server in the form of a _request_
message with a method (Section 9) and request target (Section 7.1).
The request might also contain header fields (Section 6.3) for
request modifiers, client information, and representation metadata,
content (Section 6.4) intended for processing in accordance with the
method, and trailer fields (Section 6.5) to communicate information
collected while sending the content.
A server responds to a client's request by sending one or more
_response_ messages, each including a status code (Section 15). The
response might also contain header fields for server information,
resource metadata, and representation metadata, content to be
interpreted in accordance with the status code, and trailer fields to
communicate information collected while sending the content.
3.5. User Agents
The term _user agent_ refers to any of the various client programs
that initiate a request.
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The most familiar form of user agent is the general-purpose Web
browser, but that's only a small percentage of implementations.
Other common user agents include spiders (web-traversing robots),
command-line tools, billboard screens, household appliances, scales,
light bulbs, firmware update scripts, mobile apps, and communication
devices in a multitude of shapes and sizes.
Being a user agent does not imply that there is a human user directly
interacting with the software agent at the time of a request. In
many cases, a user agent is installed or configured to run in the
background and save its results for later inspection (or save only a
subset of those results that might be interesting or erroneous).
Spiders, for example, are typically given a start URI and configured
to follow certain behavior while crawling the Web as a hypertext
graph.
Many user agents cannot, or choose not to, make interactive
suggestions to their user or provide adequate warning for security or
privacy concerns. In the few cases where this specification requires
reporting of errors to the user, it is acceptable for such reporting
to only be observable in an error console or log file. Likewise,
requirements that an automated action be confirmed by the user before
proceeding might be met via advance configuration choices, run-time
options, or simple avoidance of the unsafe action; confirmation does
not imply any specific user interface or interruption of normal
processing if the user has already made that choice.
3.6. Origin Server
The term _origin server_ refers to a program that can originate
authoritative responses for a given target resource.
The most familiar form of origin server are large public websites.
However, like user agents being equated with browsers, it is easy to
be misled into thinking that all origin servers are alike. Common
origin servers also include home automation units, configurable
networking components, office machines, autonomous robots, news
feeds, traffic cameras, real-time ad selectors, and video-on-demand
platforms.
Most HTTP communication consists of a retrieval request (GET) for a
representation of some resource identified by a URI. In the simplest
case, this might be accomplished via a single bidirectional
connection (===) between the user agent (UA) and the origin server
(O).
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request >
UA ======================================= O
< response
Figure 1
3.7. Intermediaries
HTTP enables the use of intermediaries to satisfy requests through a
chain of connections. There are three common forms of HTTP
_intermediary_: proxy, gateway, and tunnel. In some cases, a single
intermediary might act as an origin server, proxy, gateway, or
tunnel, switching behavior based on the nature of each request.
> > > >
UA =========== A =========== B =========== C =========== O
< < < <
Figure 2
The figure above shows three intermediaries (A, B, and C) between the
user agent and origin server. A request or response message that
travels the whole chain will pass through four separate connections.
Some HTTP communication options might apply only to the connection
with the nearest, non-tunnel neighbor, only to the endpoints of the
chain, or to all connections along the chain. Although the diagram
is linear, each participant might be engaged in multiple,
simultaneous communications. For example, B might be receiving
requests from many clients other than A, and/or forwarding requests
to servers other than C, at the same time that it is handling A's
request. Likewise, later requests might be sent through a different
path of connections, often based on dynamic configuration for load
balancing.
The terms _upstream_ and _downstream_ are used to describe
directional requirements in relation to the message flow: all
messages flow from upstream to downstream. The terms "inbound" and
"outbound" are used to describe directional requirements in relation
to the request route: _inbound_ means toward the origin server and
_outbound_ means toward the user agent.
A _proxy_ is a message-forwarding agent that is chosen by the client,
usually via local configuration rules, to receive requests for some
type(s) of absolute URI and attempt to satisfy those requests via
translation through the HTTP interface. Some translations are
minimal, such as for proxy requests for "http" URIs, whereas other
requests might require translation to and from entirely different
application-level protocols. Proxies are often used to group an
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organization's HTTP requests through a common intermediary for the
sake of security, annotation services, or shared caching. Some
proxies are designed to apply transformations to selected messages or
content while they are being forwarded, as described in Section 7.7.
A _gateway_ (a.k.a. _reverse proxy_) is an intermediary that acts as
an origin server for the outbound connection but translates received
requests and forwards them inbound to another server or servers.
Gateways are often used to encapsulate legacy or untrusted
information services, to improve server performance through
_accelerator_ caching, and to enable partitioning or load balancing
of HTTP services across multiple machines.
All HTTP requirements applicable to an origin server also apply to
the outbound communication of a gateway. A gateway communicates with
inbound servers using any protocol that it desires, including private
extensions to HTTP that are outside the scope of this specification.
However, an HTTP-to-HTTP gateway that wishes to interoperate with
third-party HTTP servers needs to conform to user agent requirements
on the gateway's inbound connection.
A _tunnel_ acts as a blind relay between two connections without
changing the messages. Once active, a tunnel is not considered a
party to the HTTP communication, though the tunnel might have been
initiated by an HTTP request. A tunnel ceases to exist when both
ends of the relayed connection are closed. Tunnels are used to
extend a virtual connection through an intermediary, such as when
Transport Layer Security (TLS, [TLS13]) is used to establish
confidential communication through a shared firewall proxy.
The above categories for intermediary only consider those acting as
participants in the HTTP communication. There are also
intermediaries that can act on lower layers of the network protocol
stack, filtering or redirecting HTTP traffic without the knowledge or
permission of message senders. Network intermediaries are
indistinguishable (at a protocol level) from an on-path attacker,
often introducing security flaws or interoperability problems due to
mistakenly violating HTTP semantics.
For example, an _interception proxy_ [RFC3040] (also commonly known
as a _transparent proxy_ [RFC1919]) differs from an HTTP proxy
because it is not chosen by the client. Instead, an interception
proxy filters or redirects outgoing TCP port 80 packets (and
occasionally other common port traffic). Interception proxies are
commonly found on public network access points, as a means of
enforcing account subscription prior to allowing use of non-local
Internet services, and within corporate firewalls to enforce network
usage policies.
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3.8. Caches
A _cache_ is a local store of previous response messages and the
subsystem that controls its message storage, retrieval, and deletion.
A cache stores cacheable responses in order to reduce the response
time and network bandwidth consumption on future, equivalent
requests. Any client or server MAY employ a cache, though a cache
cannot be used while acting as a tunnel.
The effect of a cache is that the request/response chain is shortened
if one of the participants along the chain has a cached response
applicable to that request. The following illustrates the resulting
chain if B has a cached copy of an earlier response from O (via C)
for a request that has not been cached by UA or A.
> >
UA =========== A =========== B - - - - - - C - - - - - - O
< <
Figure 3
A response is _cacheable_ if a cache is allowed to store a copy of
the response message for use in answering subsequent requests. Even
when a response is cacheable, there might be additional constraints
placed by the client or by the origin server on when that cached
response can be used for a particular request. HTTP requirements for
cache behavior and cacheable responses are defined in [CACHING].
There is a wide variety of architectures and configurations of caches
deployed across the World Wide Web and inside large organizations.
These include national hierarchies of proxy caches to save bandwidth
and reduce latency, Content Delivery Networks that use gateway
caching to optimise regional and global distribution of popular
sites, collaborative systems that broadcast or multicast cache
entries, archives of pre-fetched cache entries for use in off-line or
high-latency environments, and so on.
3.9. Example Message Exchange
The following example illustrates a typical HTTP/1.1 message exchange
for a GET request (Section 9.3.1) on the URI "http://www.example.com/
hello.txt":
Client request:
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GET /hello.txt HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
Host: www.example.com
Accept-Language: en, mi
Server response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT
ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 51
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/plain
Hello World! My content includes a trailing CRLF.
4. Identifiers in HTTP
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) [URI] are used throughout HTTP as
the means for identifying resources (Section 3.1).
4.1. URI References
URI references are used to target requests, indicate redirects, and
define relationships.
The definitions of "URI-reference", "absolute-URI", "relative-part",
"authority", "port", "host", "path-abempty", "segment", and "query"
are adopted from the URI generic syntax. An "absolute-path" rule is
defined for protocol elements that can contain a non-empty path
component. (This rule differs slightly from the path-abempty rule of
RFC 3986, which allows for an empty path, and path-absolute rule,
which does not allow paths that begin with "//".) A "partial-URI"
rule is defined for protocol elements that can contain a relative URI
but not a fragment component.
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URI-reference =
absolute-URI =
relative-part =
authority =
uri-host =
port =
path-abempty =
segment =
query =
absolute-path = 1*( "/" segment )
partial-URI = relative-part [ "?" query ]
Each protocol element in HTTP that allows a URI reference will
indicate in its ABNF production whether the element allows any form
of reference (URI-reference), only a URI in absolute form (absolute-
URI), only the path and optional query components (partial-URI), or
some combination of the above. Unless otherwise indicated, URI
references are parsed relative to the target URI (Section 7.1).
It is RECOMMENDED that all senders and recipients support, at a
minimum, URIs with lengths of 8000 octets in protocol elements. Note
that this implies some structures and on-wire representations (for
example, the request line in HTTP/1.1) will necessarily be larger in
some cases.
4.2. HTTP-Related URI Schemes
IANA maintains the registry of URI Schemes [BCP35] at
. Although requests
might target any URI scheme, the following schemes are inherent to
HTTP servers:
+------------+------------------------------------+-------+
| URI Scheme | Description | Ref. |
+------------+------------------------------------+-------+
| http | Hypertext Transfer Protocol | 4.2.1 |
| https | Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure | 4.2.2 |
+------------+------------------------------------+-------+
Table 2
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Note that the presence of an "http" or "https" URI does not imply
that there is always an HTTP server at the identified origin
listening for connections. Anyone can mint a URI, whether or not a
server exists and whether or not that server currently maps that
identifier to a resource. The delegated nature of registered names
and IP addresses creates a federated namespace whether or not an HTTP
server is present.
4.2.1. http URI Scheme
The "http" URI scheme is hereby defined for minting identifiers
within the hierarchical namespace governed by a potential HTTP origin
server listening for TCP ([TCP]) connections on a given port.
http-URI = "http" "://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]
The origin server for an "http" URI is identified by the authority
component, which includes a host identifier ([URI], Section 3.2.2)
and optional port number ([URI], Section 3.2.3). If the port
subcomponent is empty or not given, TCP port 80 (the reserved port
for WWW services) is the default. The origin determines who has the
right to respond authoritatively to requests that target the
identified resource, as defined in Section 4.3.2.
A sender MUST NOT generate an "http" URI with an empty host
identifier. A recipient that processes such a URI reference MUST
reject it as invalid.
The hierarchical path component and optional query component identify
the target resource within that origin server's name space.
4.2.2. https URI Scheme
The "https" URI scheme is hereby defined for minting identifiers
within the hierarchical namespace governed by a potential origin
server listening for TCP connections on a given port and capable of
establishing a TLS ([TLS13]) connection that has been secured for
HTTP communication. In this context, _secured_ specifically means
that the server has been authenticated as acting on behalf of the
identified authority and all HTTP communication with that server has
confidentiality and integrity protection that is acceptable to both
client and server.
https-URI = "https" "://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]
The origin server for an "https" URI is identified by the authority
component, which includes a host identifier ([URI], Section 3.2.2)
and optional port number ([URI], Section 3.2.3). If the port
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subcomponent is empty or not given, TCP port 443 (the reserved port
for HTTP over TLS) is the default. The origin determines who has the
right to respond authoritatively to requests that target the
identified resource, as defined in Section 4.3.3.
A sender MUST NOT generate an "https" URI with an empty host
identifier. A recipient that processes such a URI reference MUST
reject it as invalid.
The hierarchical path component and optional query component identify
the target resource within that origin server's name space.
A client MUST ensure that its HTTP requests for an "https" resource
are secured, prior to being communicated, and that it only accepts
secured responses to those requests. Note that the definition of
what cryptographic mechanisms are acceptable to client and server are
usually negotiated and can change over time.
Resources made available via the "https" scheme have no shared
identity with the "http" scheme. They are distinct origins with
separate namespaces. However, extensions to HTTP that are defined as
applying to all origins with the same host, such as the Cookie
protocol [COOKIE], allow information set by one service to impact
communication with other services within a matching group of host
domains. Such extensions ought to be designed with great care to
prevent information obtained from a secured connection being
inadvertently exchanged within an unsecured context.
4.2.3. http(s) Normalization and Comparison
The "http" and "https" URI are normalized and compared according to
the methods defined in Section 6 of [URI], using the defaults
described above for each scheme.
HTTP does not require use of a specific method for determining
equivalence. For example, a cache key might be compared as a simple
string, after syntax-based normalization, or after scheme-based
normalization.
Scheme-based normalization (Section 6.2.3 of [URI]) of "http" and
"https" URIs involves the following additional rules:
o If the port is equal to the default port for a scheme, the normal
form is to omit the port subcomponent.
o When not being used as the target of an OPTIONS request, an empty
path component is equivalent to an absolute path of "/", so the
normal form is to provide a path of "/" instead.
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o The scheme and host are case-insensitive and normally provided in
lowercase; all other components are compared in a case-sensitive
manner.
o Characters other than those in the "reserved" set are equivalent
to their percent-encoded octets: the normal form is to not encode
them (see Sections 2.1 and 2.2 of [URI]).
For example, the following three URIs are equivalent:
http://example.com:80/~smith/home.html
http://EXAMPLE.com/%7Esmith/home.html
http://EXAMPLE.com:/%7esmith/home.html
Two HTTP URIs that are equivalent after normalization (using any
method) can be assumed to identify the same resource, and any HTTP
component MAY perform normalization. As a result, distinct resources
SHOULD NOT be identified by HTTP URIs that are equivalent after
normalization (using any method defined in Section 6.2 of [URI]).
4.2.4. Deprecation of userinfo in http(s) URIs
The URI generic syntax for authority also includes a userinfo
subcomponent ([URI], Section 3.2.1) for including user authentication
information in the URI. In that subcomponent, the use of the format
"user:password" is deprecated.
Some implementations make use of the userinfo component for internal
configuration of authentication information, such as within command
invocation options, configuration files, or bookmark lists, even
though such usage might expose a user identifier or password.
A sender MUST NOT generate the userinfo subcomponent (and its "@"
delimiter) when an "http" or "https" URI reference is generated
within a message as a target URI or field value.
Before making use of an "http" or "https" URI reference received from
an untrusted source, a recipient SHOULD parse for userinfo and treat
its presence as an error; it is likely being used to obscure the
authority for the sake of phishing attacks.
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4.2.5. http(s) References with Fragment Identifiers
Fragment identifiers allow for indirect identification of a secondary
resource, independent of the URI scheme, as defined in Section 3.5 of
[URI]. Some protocol elements that refer to a URI allow inclusion of
a fragment, while others do not. They are distinguished by use of
the ABNF rule for elements where fragment is allowed; otherwise, a
specific rule that excludes fragments is used.
| *Note:* The fragment identifier component is not part of the
| scheme definition for a URI scheme (see Section 4.3 of [URI]),
| thus does not appear in the ABNF definitions for the "http" and
| "https" URI schemes above.
4.3. Authoritative Access
Authoritative access refers to dereferencing a given identifier, for
the sake of access to the identified resource, in a way that the
client believes is authoritative (controlled by the resource owner).
The process for determining whether access is granted is defined by
the URI scheme and often uses data within the URI components, such as
the authority component when the generic syntax is used. However,
authoritative access is not limited to the identified mechanism.
Section 4.3.1 defines the concept of an origin as an aid to such
uses, and the subsequent subsections explain how to establish that a
peer has the authority to represent an origin.
See Section 17.1 for security considerations related to establishing
authority.
4.3.1. URI Origin
The _origin_ for a given URI is the triple of scheme, host, and port
after normalizing the scheme and host to lowercase and normalizing
the port to remove any leading zeros. If port is elided from the
URI, the default port for that scheme is used. For example, the URI
https://Example.Com/happy.js
would have the origin
{ "https", "example.com", "443" }
which can also be described as the normalized URI prefix with port
always present:
https://example.com:443
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Each origin defines its own namespace and controls how identifiers
within that namespace are mapped to resources. In turn, how the
origin responds to valid requests, consistently over time, determines
the semantics that users will associate with a URI, and the
usefulness of those semantics is what ultimately transforms these
mechanisms into a "resource" for users to reference and access in the
future.
Two origins are distinct if they differ in scheme, host, or port.
Even when it can be verified that the same entity controls two
distinct origins, the two namespaces under those origins are distinct
unless explicitly aliased by a server authoritative for that origin.
Origin is also used within HTML and related Web protocols, beyond the
scope of this document, as described in [RFC6454].
4.3.2. http origins
Although HTTP is independent of the transport protocol, the "http"
scheme (Section 4.2.1) is specific to associating authority with
whomever controls the origin server listening for TCP connections on
the indicated port of whatever host is identified within the
authority component. This is a very weak sense of authority because
it depends on both client-specific name resolution mechanisms and
communication that might not be secured from an on-path attacker.
Nevertheless, it is a sufficient minimum for binding "http"
identifiers to an origin server for consistent resolution within a
trusted environment.
If the host identifier is provided as an IP address, the origin
server is the listener (if any) on the indicated TCP port at that IP
address. If host is a registered name, the registered name is an
indirect identifier for use with a name resolution service, such as
DNS, to find an address for an appropriate origin server.
When an "http" URI is used within a context that calls for access to
the indicated resource, a client MAY attempt access by resolving the
host identifier to an IP address, establishing a TCP connection to
that address on the indicated port, and sending an HTTP request
message to the server containing the URI's identifying data.
If the server responds to such a request with a non-interim HTTP
response message, as described in Section 15, then that response is
considered an authoritative answer to the client's request.
Note, however, that the above is not the only means for obtaining an
authoritative response, nor does it imply that an authoritative
response is always necessary (see [CACHING]). For example, the Alt-
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Svc header field [ALTSVC] allows an origin server to identify other
services that are also authoritative for that origin. Access to
"http" identified resources might also be provided by protocols
outside the scope of this document.
4.3.3. https origins
The "https" scheme (Section 4.2.2) associates authority based on the
ability of a server to use the private key corresponding to a
certificate that the client considers to be trustworthy for the
identified origin server. The client usually relies upon a chain of
trust, conveyed from some prearranged or configured trust anchor, to
deem a certificate trustworthy (Section 4.3.4).
In HTTP/1.1 and earlier, a client will only attribute authority to a
server when they are communicating over a successfully established
and secured connection specifically to that URI origin's host. The
connection establishment and certificate verification are used as
proof of authority.
In HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, a client will attribute authority to a server
when they are communicating over a successfully established and
secured connection if the URI origin's host matches any of the hosts
present in the server's certificate and the client believes that it
could open a connection to that host for that URI. In practice, a
client will make a DNS query to check that the origin's host contains
the same server IP address as the established connection. This
restriction can be removed by the origin server sending an equivalent
ORIGIN frame [RFC8336].
The request target's host and port value are passed within each HTTP
request, identifying the origin and distinguishing it from other
namespaces that might be controlled by the same server (Section 7.2).
It is the origin's responsibility to ensure that any services
provided with control over its certificate's private key are equally
responsible for managing the corresponding "https" namespaces, or at
least prepared to reject requests that appear to have been
misdirected (Section 7.4).
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An origin server might be unwilling to process requests for certain
target URIs even when they have the authority to do so. For example,
when a host operates distinct services on different ports (e.g., 443
and 8000), checking the target URI at the origin server is necessary
(even after the connection has been secured) because a network
attacker might cause connections for one port to be received at some
other port. Failing to check the target URI might allow such an
attacker to replace a response to one target URI (e.g.,
"https://example.com/foo") with a seemingly authoritative response
from the other port (e.g., "https://example.com:8000/foo").
Note that the "https" scheme does not rely on TCP and the connected
port number for associating authority, since both are outside the
secured communication and thus cannot be trusted as definitive.
Hence, the HTTP communication might take place over any channel that
has been secured, as defined in Section 4.2.2, including protocols
that don't use TCP.
When an "https" URI is used within a context that calls for access to
the indicated resource, a client MAY attempt access by resolving the
host identifier to an IP address, establishing a TCP connection to
that address on the indicated port, securing the connection end-to-
end by successfully initiating TLS over TCP with confidentiality and
integrity protection, and sending an HTTP request message over that
connection containing the URI's identifying data.
If the server responds to such a request with a non-interim HTTP
response message, as described in Section 15, then that response is
considered an authoritative answer to the client's request.
Note, however, that the above is not the only means for obtaining an
authoritative response, nor does it imply that an authoritative
response is always necessary (see [CACHING]).
4.3.4. https certificate verification
To establish a secured connection to dereference a URI, a client MUST
verify that the service's identity is an acceptable match for the
URI's origin server. Certificate verification is used to prevent
server impersonation by an on-path attacker or by an attacker that
controls name resolution. This process requires that a client be
configured with a set of trust anchors.
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In general, a client MUST verify the service identity using the
verification process defined in Section 6 of [RFC6125]. The client
MUST construct a reference identity from the service's host: if the
host is a literal IP address (Section 4.3.5), the reference identity
is an IP-ID, otherwise the host is a name and the reference identity
is a DNS-ID.
A reference identity of type CN-ID MUST NOT be used by clients. As
noted in Section 6.2.1 of [RFC6125] a reference identity of type CN-
ID might be used by older clients.
A client might be specially configured to accept an alternative form
of server identity verification. For example, a client might be
connecting to a server whose address and hostname are dynamic, with
an expectation that the service will present a specific certificate
(or a certificate matching some externally defined reference
identity) rather than one matching the target URI's origin.
In special cases, it might be appropriate for a client to simply
ignore the server's identity, but it must be understood that this
leaves a connection open to active attack.
If the certificate is not valid for the target URI's origin, a user
agent MUST either obtain confirmation from the user before proceeding
(see Section 3.5) or terminate the connection with a bad certificate
error. Automated clients MUST log the error to an appropriate audit
log (if available) and SHOULD terminate the connection (with a bad
certificate error). Automated clients MAY provide a configuration
setting that disables this check, but MUST provide a setting which
enables it.
4.3.5. IP-ID reference identity
A server that is identified using an IP address literal in the "host"
field of an "https" URI has a reference identity of type IP-ID. An
IP version 4 address uses the "IPv4address" ABNF rule and an IP
version 6 address uses the "IP-literal" production with the
"IPv6address" option; see Section 3.2.2 of [URI]. A reference
identity of IP-ID contains the decoded bytes of the IP address.
An IP version 4 address is 4 octets and an IP version 6 address is 16
octets. Use of IP-ID is not defined for any other IP version. The
iPAddress choice in the certificate subjectAltName extension does not
explicitly include the IP version and so relies on the length of the
address to distinguish versions; see Section 4.2.1.6 of [RFC5280].
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A reference identity of type IP-ID matches if the address is
identical to an iPAddress value of the subjectAltName extension of
the certificate.
5. Fields
HTTP uses _fields_ to provide data in the form of extensible key/
value pairs with a registered key namespace. Fields are sent and
received within the header and trailer sections of messages
(Section 6).
5.1. Field Names
A field name labels the corresponding field value as having the
semantics defined by that name. For example, the Date header field
is defined in Section 10.2.2 as containing the origination timestamp
for the message in which it appears.
field-name = token
Field names are case-insensitive and ought to be registered within
the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name Registry"; see
Section 16.3.1.
The interpretation of a field does not change between minor versions
of the same major HTTP version, though the default behavior of a
recipient in the absence of such a field can change. Unless
specified otherwise, fields are defined for all versions of HTTP. In
particular, the Host and Connection fields ought to be recognized by
all HTTP implementations whether or not they advertise conformance
with HTTP/1.1.
New fields can be introduced without changing the protocol version if
their defined semantics allow them to be safely ignored by recipients
that do not recognize them; see Section 16.3.
A proxy MUST forward unrecognized header fields unless the field name
is listed in the Connection header field (Section 7.6.1) or the proxy
is specifically configured to block, or otherwise transform, such
fields. Other recipients SHOULD ignore unrecognized header and
trailer fields. Adhering to these requirements allows HTTP's
functionality to be extended without updating or removing deployed
intermediaries.
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5.2. Field Lines and Combined Field Value
Field sections are composed of any number of _field lines_, each with
a _field name_ (see Section 5.1) identifying the field, and a _field
line value_ that conveys data for that instance of the field.
When a field name is only present once in a section, the combined
_field value_ for that field consists of the corresponding field line
value. When a field name is repeated within a section, its combined
field value consists of the list of corresponding field line values
within that section, concatenated in order, with each field line
value separated by a comma.
For example, this section:
Example-Field: Foo, Bar
Example-Field: Baz
contains two field lines, both with the field name "Example-Field".
The first field line has a field line value of "Foo, Bar", while the
second field line value is "Baz". The field value for "Example-
Field" is the list "Foo, Bar, Baz".
5.3. Field Order
A recipient MAY combine multiple field lines within a field section
that have the same field name into one field line, without changing
the semantics of the message, by appending each subsequent field line
value to the initial field line value in order, separated by a comma
(",") and optional whitespace (OWS, defined in Section 5.6.3). For
consistency, use comma SP.
The order in which field lines with the same name are received is
therefore significant to the interpretation of the field value; a
proxy MUST NOT change the order of these field line values when
forwarding a message.
This means that, aside from the well-known exception noted below, a
sender MUST NOT generate multiple field lines with the same name in a
message (whether in the headers or trailers), or append a field line
when a field line of the same name already exists in the message,
unless that field's definition allows multiple field line values to
be recombined as a comma-separated list [i.e., at least one
alternative of the field's definition allows a comma-separated list,
such as an ABNF rule of #(values) defined in Section 5.6.1].
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| *Note:* In practice, the "Set-Cookie" header field ([COOKIE])
| often appears in a response message across multiple field lines
| and does not use the list syntax, violating the above
| requirements on multiple field lines with the same field name.
| Since it cannot be combined into a single field value,
| recipients ought to handle "Set-Cookie" as a special case while
| processing fields. (See Appendix A.2.3 of [Kri2001] for
| details.)
The order in which field lines with differing field names are
received in a section is not significant. However, it is good
practice to send header fields that contain additional control data
first, such as Host on requests and Date on responses, so that
implementations can decide when not to handle a message as early as
possible.
A server MUST NOT apply a request to the target resource until it
receives the entire request header section, since later header field
lines might include conditionals, authentication credentials, or
deliberately misleading duplicate header fields that could impact
request processing.
5.4. Field Limits
HTTP does not place a predefined limit on the length of each field
line, field value, or on the length of a header or trailer section as
a whole, as described in Section 2. Various ad hoc limitations on
individual lengths are found in practice, often depending on the
specific field's semantics.
A server that receives a request header field line, field value, or
set of fields larger than it wishes to process MUST respond with an
appropriate 4xx (Client Error) status code. Ignoring such header
fields would increase the server's vulnerability to request smuggling
attacks (Section 11.2 of [HTTP/1.1]).
A client MAY discard or truncate received field lines that are larger
than the client wishes to process if the field semantics are such
that the dropped value(s) can be safely ignored without changing the
message framing or response semantics.
5.5. Field Values
HTTP field values consist of a sequence of characters in a format
defined by the field's grammar. Each field's grammar is usually
defined using ABNF ([RFC5234]).
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field-value = *field-content
field-content = field-vchar
[ 1*( SP / HTAB / field-vchar ) field-vchar ]
field-vchar = VCHAR / obs-text
A field value does not include leading or trailing whitespace. When
a specific version of HTTP allows such whitespace to appear in a
message, a field parsing implementation MUST exclude such whitespace
prior to evaluating the field value.
Field values are usually constrained to the range of US-ASCII
characters [USASCII]. Fields needing a greater range of characters
can use an encoding, such as the one defined in [RFC8187].
Historically, HTTP allowed field content with text in the ISO-8859-1
charset [ISO-8859-1], supporting other charsets only through use of
[RFC2047] encoding. Specifications for newly defined fields SHOULD
limit their values to visible US-ASCII octets (VCHAR), SP, and HTAB.
A recipient SHOULD treat other octets in field content (obs-text) as
opaque data.
Field values containing CR or NUL characters are invalid and
dangerous, due to the varying ways that implementations might parse
and interpret those characters; a recipient of CR or NUL within a
field value MUST either reject the message or replace each of those
characters with SP before further processing or forwarding of that
message. Field values containing other CTL characters are also
invalid; however, recipients MAY retain such characters for the sake
of robustness if they only appear within safe field value contexts
(e.g., opaque data).
Fields that only anticipate a single member as the field value are
referred to as _singleton fields_.
Fields that allow multiple members as the field value are referred to
as _list-based fields_. The list operator extension of Section 5.6.1
is used as a common notation for defining field values that can
contain multiple members.
Because commas (",") are used as the delimiter between members, they
need to be treated with care if they are allowed as data within a
member. This is true for both list-based and singleton fields, since
a singleton field might be erroneously sent with multiple members and
detecting such errors improves interoperability. Fields that expect
to contain a comma within a member, such as within an HTTP-date or
URI-reference element, ought to be defined with delimiters around
that element to distinguish any comma within that data from potential
list separators.
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For example, a textual date and a URI (either of which might contain
a comma) could be safely carried in list-based field values like
these:
Example-URIs: "http://example.com/a.html,foo",
"http://without-a-comma.example.com/"
Example-Dates: "Sat, 04 May 1996", "Wed, 14 Sep 2005"
Note that double-quote delimiters are almost always used with the
quoted-string production (Section 5.6.4); using a different syntax
inside double-quotes will likely cause unnecessary confusion.
Many fields (such as Content-Type, defined in Section 8.3) use a
common syntax for parameters that allows both unquoted (token) and
quoted (quoted-string) syntax for a parameter value (Section 5.6.6).
Use of common syntax allows recipients to reuse existing parser
components. When allowing both forms, the meaning of a parameter
value ought to be the same whether it was received as a token or a
quoted string.
Historically, HTTP field values could be extended over multiple lines
by preceding each extra line with at least one space or horizontal
tab (obs-fold). This document assumes that any such obsolete line
folding has been removed prior to interpreting the field value (e.g.,
as described in Section 5.2 of [HTTP/1.1]).
| *Note:* For defining field value syntax, this specification
| uses an ABNF rule named after the field name to define the
| allowed grammar for that field's value (after said value has
| been extracted from the underlying messaging syntax and
| multiple instances combined into a list).
5.6. Common Rules for Defining Field Values
5.6.1. Lists (#rule ABNF Extension)
A #rule extension to the ABNF rules of [RFC5234] is used to improve
readability in the definitions of some list-based field values.
A construct "#" is defined, similar to "*", for defining comma-
delimited lists of elements. The full form is "#element"
indicating at least and at most elements, each separated by a
single comma (",") and optional whitespace (OWS, defined in
Section 5.6.3).
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5.6.1.1. Sender Requirements
In any production that uses the list construct, a sender MUST NOT
generate empty list elements. In other words, a sender MUST generate
lists that satisfy the following syntax:
1#element => element *( OWS "," OWS element )
and:
#element => [ 1#element ]
and for n >= 1 and m > 1:
#element => element *( OWS "," OWS element )
Appendix A shows the collected ABNF for senders after the list
constructs have been expanded.
5.6.1.2. Recipient Requirements
Empty elements do not contribute to the count of elements present. A
recipient MUST parse and ignore a reasonable number of empty list
elements: enough to handle common mistakes by senders that merge
values, but not so much that they could be used as a denial-of-
service mechanism. In other words, a recipient MUST accept lists
that satisfy the following syntax:
#element => [ element ] *( OWS "," OWS [ element ] )
Note that because of the potential presence of empty list elements,
the RFC 5234 ABNF cannot enforce the cardinality of list elements,
and consequently all cases are mapped as if there was no cardinality
specified.
For example, given these ABNF productions:
example-list = 1#example-list-elmt
example-list-elmt = token ; see Section 5.6.2
Then the following are valid values for example-list (not including
the double quotes, which are present for delimitation only):
"foo,bar"
"foo ,bar,"
"foo , ,bar,charlie"
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In contrast, the following values would be invalid, since at least
one non-empty element is required by the example-list production:
""
","
", ,"
5.6.2. Tokens
Tokens are short textual identifiers that do not include whitespace
or delimiters.
token = 1*tchar
tchar = "!" / "#" / "$" / "%" / "&" / "'" / "*"
/ "+" / "-" / "." / "^" / "_" / "`" / "|" / "~"
/ DIGIT / ALPHA
; any VCHAR, except delimiters
Many HTTP field values are defined using common syntax components,
separated by whitespace or specific delimiting characters.
Delimiters are chosen from the set of US-ASCII visual characters not
allowed in a token (DQUOTE and "(),/:;<=>?@[\]{}").
5.6.3. Whitespace
This specification uses three rules to denote the use of linear
whitespace: OWS (optional whitespace), RWS (required whitespace), and
BWS ("bad" whitespace).
The OWS rule is used where zero or more linear whitespace octets
might appear. For protocol elements where optional whitespace is
preferred to improve readability, a sender SHOULD generate the
optional whitespace as a single SP; otherwise, a sender SHOULD NOT
generate optional whitespace except as needed to overwrite invalid or
unwanted protocol elements during in-place message filtering.
The RWS rule is used when at least one linear whitespace octet is
required to separate field tokens. A sender SHOULD generate RWS as a
single SP.
OWS and RWS have the same semantics as a single SP. Any content
known to be defined as OWS or RWS MAY be replaced with a single SP
before interpreting it or forwarding the message downstream.
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The BWS rule is used where the grammar allows optional whitespace
only for historical reasons. A sender MUST NOT generate BWS in
messages. A recipient MUST parse for such bad whitespace and remove
it before interpreting the protocol element.
BWS has no semantics. Any content known to be defined as BWS MAY be
removed before interpreting it or forwarding the message downstream.
OWS = *( SP / HTAB )
; optional whitespace
RWS = 1*( SP / HTAB )
; required whitespace
BWS = OWS
; "bad" whitespace
5.6.4. Quoted Strings
A string of text is parsed as a single value if it is quoted using
double-quote marks.
quoted-string = DQUOTE *( qdtext / quoted-pair ) DQUOTE
qdtext = HTAB / SP / %x21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-7E / obs-text
obs-text = %x80-FF
The backslash octet ("\") can be used as a single-octet quoting
mechanism within quoted-string and comment constructs. Recipients
that process the value of a quoted-string MUST handle a quoted-pair
as if it were replaced by the octet following the backslash.
quoted-pair = "\" ( HTAB / SP / VCHAR / obs-text )
A sender SHOULD NOT generate a quoted-pair in a quoted-string except
where necessary to quote DQUOTE and backslash octets occurring within
that string. A sender SHOULD NOT generate a quoted-pair in a comment
except where necessary to quote parentheses ["(" and ")"] and
backslash octets occurring within that comment.
5.6.5. Comments
Comments can be included in some HTTP fields by surrounding the
comment text with parentheses. Comments are only allowed in fields
containing "comment" as part of their field value definition.
comment = "(" *( ctext / quoted-pair / comment ) ")"
ctext = HTAB / SP / %x21-27 / %x2A-5B / %x5D-7E / obs-text
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5.6.6. Parameters
Parameters are instances of name=value pairs; they are often used in
field values as a common syntax for appending auxiliary information
to an item. Each parameter is usually delimited by an immediately
preceding semicolon.
parameters = *( OWS ";" OWS [ parameter ] )
parameter = parameter-name "=" parameter-value
parameter-name = token
parameter-value = ( token / quoted-string )
Parameter names are case-insensitive. Parameter values might or
might not be case-sensitive, depending on the semantics of the
parameter name. Examples of parameters and some equivalent forms can
be seen in media types (Section 8.3.1) and the Accept header field
(Section 12.5.1).
A parameter value that matches the token production can be
transmitted either as a token or within a quoted-string. The quoted
and unquoted values are equivalent.
| *Note:* Parameters do not allow whitespace (not even "bad"
| whitespace) around the "=" character.
5.6.7. Date/Time Formats
Prior to 1995, there were three different formats commonly used by
servers to communicate timestamps. For compatibility with old
implementations, all three are defined here. The preferred format is
a fixed-length and single-zone subset of the date and time
specification used by the Internet Message Format [RFC5322].
HTTP-date = IMF-fixdate / obs-date
An example of the preferred format is
Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT ; IMF-fixdate
Examples of the two obsolete formats are
Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT ; obsolete RFC 850 format
Sun Nov 6 08:49:37 1994 ; ANSI C's asctime() format
A recipient that parses a timestamp value in an HTTP field MUST
accept all three HTTP-date formats. When a sender generates a field
that contains one or more timestamps defined as HTTP-date, the sender
MUST generate those timestamps in the IMF-fixdate format.
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An HTTP-date value represents time as an instance of Coordinated
Universal Time (UTC). The first two formats indicate UTC by the
three-letter abbreviation for Greenwich Mean Time, "GMT", a
predecessor of the UTC name; values in the asctime format are assumed
to be in UTC. A sender that generates HTTP-date values from a local
clock ought to use NTP ([RFC5905]) or some similar protocol to
synchronize its clock to UTC.
Preferred format:
IMF-fixdate = day-name "," SP date1 SP time-of-day SP GMT
; fixed length/zone/capitalization subset of the format
; see Section 3.3 of [RFC5322]
day-name = %s"Mon" / %s"Tue" / %s"Wed"
/ %s"Thu" / %s"Fri" / %s"Sat" / %s"Sun"
date1 = day SP month SP year
; e.g., 02 Jun 1982
day = 2DIGIT
month = %s"Jan" / %s"Feb" / %s"Mar" / %s"Apr"
/ %s"May" / %s"Jun" / %s"Jul" / %s"Aug"
/ %s"Sep" / %s"Oct" / %s"Nov" / %s"Dec"
year = 4DIGIT
GMT = %s"GMT"
time-of-day = hour ":" minute ":" second
; 00:00:00 - 23:59:60 (leap second)
hour = 2DIGIT
minute = 2DIGIT
second = 2DIGIT
Obsolete formats:
obs-date = rfc850-date / asctime-date
rfc850-date = day-name-l "," SP date2 SP time-of-day SP GMT
date2 = day "-" month "-" 2DIGIT
; e.g., 02-Jun-82
day-name-l = %s"Monday" / %s"Tuesday" / %s"Wednesday"
/ %s"Thursday" / %s"Friday" / %s"Saturday"
/ %s"Sunday"
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asctime-date = day-name SP date3 SP time-of-day SP year
date3 = month SP ( 2DIGIT / ( SP 1DIGIT ))
; e.g., Jun 2
HTTP-date is case sensitive. Note that Section 4.2 of [CACHING]
relaxes this for cache recipients.
A sender MUST NOT generate additional whitespace in an HTTP-date
beyond that specifically included as SP in the grammar. The
semantics of day-name, day, month, year, and time-of-day are the same
as those defined for the Internet Message Format constructs with the
corresponding name ([RFC5322], Section 3.3).
Recipients of a timestamp value in rfc850-date format, which uses a
two-digit year, MUST interpret a timestamp that appears to be more
than 50 years in the future as representing the most recent year in
the past that had the same last two digits.
Recipients of timestamp values are encouraged to be robust in parsing
timestamps unless otherwise restricted by the field definition. For
example, messages are occasionally forwarded over HTTP from a non-
HTTP source that might generate any of the date and time
specifications defined by the Internet Message Format.
| *Note:* HTTP requirements for the date/time stamp format apply
| only to their usage within the protocol stream.
| Implementations are not required to use these formats for user
| presentation, request logging, etc.
6. Message Abstraction
Each major version of HTTP defines its own syntax for communicating
messages. This section defines an abstract data type for HTTP
messages based on a generalization of those message characteristics,
common structure, and capacity for conveying semantics. This
abstraction is used to define requirements on senders and recipients
that are independent of the HTTP version, such that a message in one
version can be relayed through other versions without changing its
meaning.
A _message_ consists of control data to describe and route the
message, a headers lookup table of key/value pairs for extending that
control data and conveying additional information about the sender,
message, content, or context, a potentially unbounded stream of
content, and a trailers lookup table of key/value pairs for
communicating information obtained while sending the content.
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Framing and control data is sent first, followed by a header section
containing fields for the headers table. When a message includes
content, the content is sent after the header section, potentially
followed by a trailer section that might contain fields for the
trailers table.
Messages are expected to be processed as a stream, wherein the
purpose of that stream and its continued processing is revealed while
being read. Hence, control data describes what the recipient needs
to know immediately, header fields describe what needs to be known
before receiving content, the content (when present) presumably
contains what the recipient wants or needs to fulfill the message
semantics, and trailer fields provide optional metadata that was
unknown prior to sending the content.
Messages are intended to be _self-descriptive_: everything a
recipient needs to know about the message can be determined by
looking at the message itself, after decoding or reconstituting parts
that have been compressed or elided in transit, without requiring an
understanding of the sender's current application state (established
via prior messages). However, a client MUST retain knowledge of the
request when parsing, interpreting, or caching a corresponding
response. For example, responses to the HEAD method look just like
the beginning of a response to GET, but cannot be parsed in the same
manner.
Note that this message abstraction is a generalization across many
versions of HTTP, including features that might not be found in some
versions. For example, trailers were introduced within the HTTP/1.1
chunked transfer coding as a trailer section after the content. An
equivalent feature is present in HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 within the header
block that terminates each stream.
6.1. Framing and Completeness
Message framing indicates how each message begins and ends, such that
each message can be distinguished from other messages or noise on the
same connection. Each major version of HTTP defines its own framing
mechanism.
HTTP/0.9 and early deployments of HTTP/1.0 used closure of the
underlying connection to end a response. For backwards
compatibility, this implicit framing is also allowed in HTTP/1.1.
However, implicit framing can fail to distinguish an incomplete
response if the connection closes early. For that reason, almost all
modern implementations use explicit framing in the form of length-
delimited sequences of message data.
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A message is considered _complete_ when all of the octets indicated
by its framing are available. Note that, when no explicit framing is
used, a response message that is ended by the underlying connection's
close is considered complete even though it might be
indistinguishable from an incomplete response, unless a transport-
level error indicates that it is not complete.
6.2. Control Data
Messages start with control data that describe its primary purpose.
Request message control data includes a request method (Section 9),
request target (Section 7.1), and protocol version (Section 2.5).
Response message control data includes a status code (Section 15),
optional reason phrase, and protocol version.
In HTTP/1.1 ([HTTP/1.1]) and earlier, control data is sent as the
first line of a message. In HTTP/2 ([HTTP/2]) and HTTP/3 ([HTTP/3]),
control data is sent as pseudo-header fields with a reserved name
prefix (e.g., ":authority").
Every HTTP message has a protocol version. Depending on the version
in use, it might be identified within the message explicitly or
inferred by the connection over which the message is received.
Recipients use that version information to determine limitations or
potential for later communication with that sender.
When a message is forwarded by an intermediary, the protocol version
is updated to reflect the version used by that intermediary. The Via
header field (Section 7.6.3) is used to communicate upstream protocol
information within a forwarded message.
A client SHOULD send a request version equal to the highest version
to which the client is conformant and whose major version is no
higher than the highest version supported by the server, if this is
known. A client MUST NOT send a version to which it is not
conformant.
A client MAY send a lower request version if it is known that the
server incorrectly implements the HTTP specification, but only after
the client has attempted at least one normal request and determined
from the response status code or header fields (e.g., Server) that
the server improperly handles higher request versions.
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A server SHOULD send a response version equal to the highest version
to which the server is conformant that has a major version less than
or equal to the one received in the request. A server MUST NOT send
a version to which it is not conformant. A server can send a 505
(HTTP Version Not Supported) response if it wishes, for any reason,
to refuse service of the client's major protocol version.
A recipient that receives a message with a major version number that
it implements and a minor version number higher than what it
implements SHOULD process the message as if it were in the highest
minor version within that major version to which the recipient is
conformant. A recipient can assume that a message with a higher
minor version, when sent to a recipient that has not yet indicated
support for that higher version, is sufficiently backwards-compatible
to be safely processed by any implementation of the same major
version.
6.3. Header Fields
Fields (Section 5) that are sent/received before the content are
referred to as "header fields" (or just "headers", colloquially).
The _header section_ of a message consists of a sequence of header
field lines. Each header field might modify or extend message
semantics, describe the sender, define the content, or provide
additional context.
| *Note:* We refer to named fields specifically as a "header
| field" when they are only allowed to be sent in the header
| section.
6.4. Content
HTTP messages often transfer a complete or partial representation as
the message _content_: a stream of octets sent after the header
section, as delineated by the message framing.
This abstract definition of content reflects the data after it has
been extracted from the message framing. For example, an HTTP/1.1
message body (Section 6 of [HTTP/1.1]) might consist of a stream of
data encoded with the chunked transfer coding -- a sequence of data
chunks, one zero-length chunk, and a trailer section -- whereas the
content of that same message includes only the data stream after the
transfer coding has been decoded; it does not include the chunk
lengths, chunked framing syntax, nor the trailer fields
(Section 6.5).
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| *Note:* Some field names have a "Content-" prefix. This is an
| informal convention; while some of these fields refer to the
| content of the message, as defined above, others are scoped to
| the selected representation (Section 3.2). See the individual
| field's definition to disambiguate.
6.4.1. Content Semantics
The purpose of content in a request is defined by the method
semantics (Section 9).
For example, a representation in the content of a PUT request
(Section 9.3.4) represents the desired state of the target resource
after the request is successfully applied, whereas a representation
in the content of a POST request (Section 9.3.3) represents
information to be processed by the target resource.
In a response, the content's purpose is defined by both the request
method and the response status code (Section 15). For example, the
content of a 200 (OK) response to GET (Section 9.3.1) represents the
current state of the target resource, as observed at the time of the
message origination date (Section 10.2.2), whereas the content of the
same status code in a response to POST might represent either the
processing result or the new state of the target resource after
applying the processing.
The content of a 206 (Partial Content) response to GET contains
either a single part of the selected representation or a multipart
message body containing multiple parts of that representation, as
described in Section 15.3.7.
Response messages with an error status code usually contain content
that represents the error condition, such that the content describes
the error state and what steps are suggested for resolving it.
Responses to the HEAD request method (Section 9.3.2) never include
content; the associated response header fields indicate only what
their values would have been if the request method had been GET
(Section 9.3.1).
2xx (Successful) responses to a CONNECT request method
(Section 9.3.6) switch the connection to tunnel mode instead of
having content.
All 1xx (Informational), 204 (No Content), and 304 (Not Modified)
responses do not include content.
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All other responses do include content, although that content might
be of zero length.
6.4.2. Identifying Content
When a complete or partial representation is transferred as message
content, it is often desirable for the sender to supply, or the
recipient to determine, an identifier for a resource corresponding to
that specific representation. For example, a client making a GET
request on a resource for "the current weather report" might want an
identifier specific to the content returned (e.g., "weather report
for Laguna Beach at 20210720T1711"). This can be useful for sharing
or bookmarking content from resources that are expected to have
changing representations over time.
For a request message:
o If the request has a Content-Location header field, then the
sender asserts that the content is a representation of the
resource identified by the Content-Location field value. However,
such an assertion cannot be trusted unless it can be verified by
other means (not defined by this specification). The information
might still be useful for revision history links.
o Otherwise, the content is unidentified by HTTP, but a more
specific identifier might be supplied within the content itself.
For a response message, the following rules are applied in order
until a match is found:
1. If the request method is HEAD or the response status code is 204
(No Content) or 304 (Not Modified), there is no content in the
response.
2. If the request method is GET and the response status code is 200
(OK), the content is a representation of the resource identified
by the target URI (Section 7.1).
3. If the request method is GET and the response status code is 203
(Non-Authoritative Information), the content is a potentially
modified or enhanced representation of the target resource as
provided by an intermediary.
4. If the request method is GET and the response status code is 206
(Partial Content), the content is one or more parts of a
representation of the resource identified by the target URI
(Section 7.1).
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5. If the response has a Content-Location header field and its field
value is a reference to the same URI as the target URI, the
content is a representation of the target resource.
6. If the response has a Content-Location header field and its field
value is a reference to a URI different from the target URI, then
the sender asserts that the content is a representation of the
resource identified by the Content-Location field value.
However, such an assertion cannot be trusted unless it can be
verified by other means (not defined by this specification).
7. Otherwise, the content is unidentified by HTTP, but a more
specific identifier might be supplied within the content itself.
6.5. Trailer Fields
Fields (Section 5) that are located within a _trailer section_ are
referred to as "trailer fields" (or just "trailers", colloquially).
Trailer fields can be useful for supplying message integrity checks,
digital signatures, delivery metrics, or post-processing status
information.
Trailer fields ought to be processed and stored separately from the
fields in the header section to avoid contradicting message semantics
known at the time the header section was complete. The presence or
absence of certain header fields might impact choices made for the
routing or processing of the message as a whole before the trailers
are received; those choices cannot be unmade by the later discovery
of trailer fields.
6.5.1. Limitations on use of Trailers
A trailer section is only possible when supported by the version of
HTTP in use and enabled by an explicit framing mechanism. For
example, the chunked coding in HTTP/1.1 allows a trailer section to
be sent after the content (Section 7.1.2 of [HTTP/1.1]).
Many fields cannot be processed outside the header section because
their evaluation is necessary prior to receiving the content, such as
those that describe message framing, routing, authentication, request
modifiers, response controls, or content format. A sender MUST NOT
generate a trailer field unless the sender knows the corresponding
header field name's definition permits the field to be sent in
trailers.
Trailer fields can be difficult to process by intermediaries that
forward messages from one protocol version to another. If the entire
message can be buffered in transit, some intermediaries could merge
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trailer fields into the header section (as appropriate) before it is
forwarded. However, in most cases, the trailers are simply
discarded. A recipient MUST NOT merge a trailer field into a header
section unless the recipient understands the corresponding header
field definition and that definition explicitly permits and defines
how trailer field values can be safely merged.
The presence of the keyword "trailers" in the TE header field
(Section 10.1.4) of a request indicates that the client is willing to
accept trailer fields, on behalf of itself and any downstream
clients. For requests from an intermediary, this implies that all
downstream clients are willing to accept trailer fields in the
forwarded response. Note that the presence of "trailers" does not
mean that the client(s) will process any particular trailer field in
the response; only that the trailer section(s) will not be dropped by
any of the clients.
Because of the potential for trailer fields to be discarded in
transit, a server SHOULD NOT generate trailer fields that it believes
are necessary for the user agent to receive.
6.5.2. Processing Trailer Fields
The "Trailer" header field (Section 10.1.5) can be sent to indicate
fields likely to be sent in the trailer section, which allows
recipients to prepare for their receipt before processing the
content. For example, this could be useful if a field name indicates
that a dynamic checksum should be calculated as the content is
received and then immediately checked upon receipt of the trailer
field value.
Like header fields, trailer fields with the same name are processed
in the order received; multiple trailer field lines with the same
name have the equivalent semantics as appending the multiple values
as a list of members. Trailer fields that might be generated more
than once during a message MUST be defined as a list-based field even
if each member value is only processed once per field line received.
At the end of a message, a recipient MAY treat the set of received
trailer fields as a data structure of key/value pairs, similar to
(but separate from) the header fields. Additional processing
expectations, if any, can be defined within the field specification
for a field intended for use in trailers.
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7. Routing HTTP Messages
HTTP request message routing is determined by each client based on
the target resource, the client's proxy configuration, and
establishment or reuse of an inbound connection. The corresponding
response routing follows the same connection chain back to the
client.
7.1. Determining the Target Resource
Although HTTP is used in a wide variety of applications, most clients
rely on the same resource identification mechanism and configuration
techniques as general-purpose Web browsers. Even when communication
options are hard-coded in a client's configuration, we can think of
their combined effect as a URI reference (Section 4.1).
A URI reference is resolved to its absolute form in order to obtain
the _target URI_. The target URI excludes the reference's fragment
component, if any, since fragment identifiers are reserved for
client-side processing ([URI], Section 3.5).
To perform an action on a _target resource_, the client sends a
request message containing enough components of its parsed target URI
to enable recipients to identify that same resource. For historical
reasons, the parsed target URI components, collectively referred to
as the _request target_, are sent within the message control data and
the Host header field (Section 7.2).
There are two unusual cases for which the request target components
are in a method-specific form:
o For CONNECT (Section 9.3.6), the request target is the host name
and port number of the tunnel destination, separated by a colon.
o For OPTIONS (Section 9.3.7), the request target can be a single
asterisk ("*").
See the respective method definitions for details. These forms MUST
NOT be used with other methods.
Upon receipt of a client's request, a server reconstructs the target
URI from the received components in accordance with their local
configuration and incoming connection context. This reconstruction
is specific to each major protocol version. For example, Section 3.3
of [HTTP/1.1] defines how a server determines the target URI of an
HTTP/1.1 request.
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| *Note:* Previous specifications defined the recomposed target
| URI as a distinct concept, the _effective request URI_.
7.2. Host and :authority
The "Host" header field in a request provides the host and port
information from the target URI, enabling the origin server to
distinguish among resources while servicing requests for multiple
host names.
In HTTP/2 [HTTP/2] and HTTP/3 [HTTP/3], the Host header field is, in
some cases, supplanted by the ":authority" pseudo-header field of a
request's control data.
Host = uri-host [ ":" port ] ; Section 4
The target URI's authority information is critical for handling a
request. A user agent MUST generate a Host header field in a request
unless it sends that information as an ":authority" pseudo-header
field. A user agent that sends Host SHOULD send it as the first
field in the header section of a request.
For example, a GET request to the origin server for
would begin with:
GET /pub/WWW/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.org
Since the host and port information acts as an application-level
routing mechanism, it is a frequent target for malware seeking to
poison a shared cache or redirect a request to an unintended server.
An interception proxy is particularly vulnerable if it relies on the
host and port information for redirecting requests to internal
servers, or for use as a cache key in a shared cache, without first
verifying that the intercepted connection is targeting a valid IP
address for that host.
7.3. Routing Inbound Requests
Once the target URI and its origin are determined, a client decides
whether a network request is necessary to accomplish the desired
semantics and, if so, where that request is to be directed.
7.3.1. To a Cache
If the client has a cache [CACHING] and the request can be satisfied
by it, then the request is usually directed there first.
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7.3.2. To a Proxy
If the request is not satisfied by a cache, then a typical client
will check its configuration to determine whether a proxy is to be
used to satisfy the request. Proxy configuration is implementation-
dependent, but is often based on URI prefix matching, selective
authority matching, or both, and the proxy itself is usually
identified by an "http" or "https" URI. If a proxy is applicable,
the client connects inbound by establishing (or reusing) a connection
to that proxy.
7.3.3. To the Origin
If no proxy is applicable, a typical client will invoke a handler
routine, usually specific to the target URI's scheme, to connect
directly to an origin for the target resource. How that is
accomplished is dependent on the target URI scheme and defined by its
associated specification.
7.4. Rejecting Misdirected Requests
Once a request is received by a server and parsed sufficiently to
determine its target URI, the server decides whether to process the
request itself, forward the request to another server, redirect the
client to a different resource, respond with an error, or drop the
connection. This decision can be influenced by anything about the
request or connection context, but is specifically directed at
whether the server has been configured to process requests for that
target URI and whether the connection context is appropriate for that
request.
For example, a request might have been misdirected, deliberately or
accidentally, such that the information within a received Host header
field differs from the connection's host or port. If the connection
is from a trusted gateway, such inconsistency might be expected;
otherwise, it might indicate an attempt to bypass security filters,
trick the server into delivering non-public content, or poison a
cache. See Section 17 for security considerations regarding message
routing.
Unless the connection is from a trusted gateway, an origin server
MUST reject a request if any scheme-specific requirements for the
target URI are not met. In particular, a request for an "https"
resource MUST be rejected unless it has been received over a
connection that has been secured via a certificate valid for that
target URI's origin, as defined by Section 4.2.2.
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The 421 (Misdirected Request) status code in a response indicates
that the origin server has rejected the request because it appears to
have been misdirected (Section 15.5.20).
7.5. Response Correlation
A connection might be used for multiple request/response exchanges.
The mechanism used to correlate between request and response messages
is version dependent; some versions of HTTP use implicit ordering of
messages, while others use an explicit identifier.
All responses, regardless of the status code (including interim
responses) can be sent at any time after a request is received, even
if the request is not yet complete. A response can complete before
its corresponding request is complete (Section 6.1). Likewise,
clients are not expected to wait any specific amount of time for a
response. Clients (including intermediaries) might abandon a request
if the response is not forthcoming within a reasonable period of
time.
A client that receives a response while it is still sending the
associated request SHOULD continue sending that request, unless it
receives an explicit indication to the contrary (see, e.g.,
Section 9.5 of [HTTP/1.1] and Section 6.4 of [HTTP/2]).
7.6. Message Forwarding
As described in Section 3.7, intermediaries can serve a variety of
roles in the processing of HTTP requests and responses. Some
intermediaries are used to improve performance or availability.
Others are used for access control or to filter content. Since an
HTTP stream has characteristics similar to a pipe-and-filter
architecture, there are no inherent limits to the extent an
intermediary can enhance (or interfere) with either direction of the
stream.
Intermediaries are expected to forward messages even when protocol
elements are not recognized (e.g., new methods, status codes, or
field names), since that preserves extensibility for downstream
recipients.
An intermediary not acting as a tunnel MUST implement the Connection
header field, as specified in Section 7.6.1, and exclude fields from
being forwarded that are only intended for the incoming connection.
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An intermediary MUST NOT forward a message to itself unless it is
protected from an infinite request loop. In general, an intermediary
ought to recognize its own server names, including any aliases, local
variations, or literal IP addresses, and respond to such requests
directly.
An HTTP message can be parsed as a stream for incremental processing
or forwarding downstream. However, senders and recipients cannot
rely on incremental delivery of partial messages, since some
implementations will buffer or delay message forwarding for the sake
of network efficiency, security checks, or content transformations.
7.6.1. Connection
The "Connection" header field allows the sender to list desired
control options for the current connection.
When a field aside from Connection is used to supply control
information for or about the current connection, the sender MUST list
the corresponding field name within the Connection header field.
Note that some versions of HTTP prohibit the use of fields for such
information, and therefore do not allow the Connection field.
Intermediaries MUST parse a received Connection header field before a
message is forwarded and, for each connection-option in this field,
remove any header or trailer field(s) from the message with the same
name as the connection-option, and then remove the Connection header
field itself (or replace it with the intermediary's own connection
options for the forwarded message).
Hence, the Connection header field provides a declarative way of
distinguishing fields that are only intended for the immediate
recipient ("hop-by-hop") from those fields that are intended for all
recipients on the chain ("end-to-end"), enabling the message to be
self-descriptive and allowing future connection-specific extensions
to be deployed without fear that they will be blindly forwarded by
older intermediaries.
Furthermore, intermediaries SHOULD remove or replace field(s) whose
semantics are known to require removal before forwarding, whether or
not they appear as a Connection option, after applying those fields'
semantics. This includes but is not limited to:
o Proxy-Connection (Appendix C.2.2 of [HTTP/1.1])
o Keep-Alive (Section 19.7.1 of [RFC2068])
o TE (Section 10.1.4)
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o Transfer-Encoding (Section 6.1 of [HTTP/1.1])
o Upgrade (Section 7.8)
The Connection header field's value has the following grammar:
Connection = #connection-option
connection-option = token
Connection options are case-insensitive.
A sender MUST NOT send a connection option corresponding to a field
that is intended for all recipients of the content. For example,
Cache-Control is never appropriate as a connection option
(Section 5.2 of [CACHING]).
Connection options do not always correspond to a field present in the
message, since a connection-specific field might not be needed if
there are no parameters associated with a connection option. In
contrast, a connection-specific field received without a
corresponding connection option usually indicates that the field has
been improperly forwarded by an intermediary and ought to be ignored
by the recipient.
When defining a new connection option that does not correspond to a
field, specification authors ought to reserve the corresponding field
name anyway in order to avoid later collisions. Such reserved field
names are registered in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field
Name Registry (Section 16.3.1).
7.6.2. Max-Forwards
The "Max-Forwards" header field provides a mechanism with the TRACE
(Section 9.3.8) and OPTIONS (Section 9.3.7) request methods to limit
the number of times that the request is forwarded by proxies. This
can be useful when the client is attempting to trace a request that
appears to be failing or looping mid-chain.
Max-Forwards = 1*DIGIT
The Max-Forwards value is a decimal integer indicating the remaining
number of times this request message can be forwarded.
Each intermediary that receives a TRACE or OPTIONS request containing
a Max-Forwards header field MUST check and update its value prior to
forwarding the request. If the received value is zero (0), the
intermediary MUST NOT forward the request; instead, the intermediary
MUST respond as the final recipient. If the received Max-Forwards
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value is greater than zero, the intermediary MUST generate an updated
Max-Forwards field in the forwarded message with a field value that
is the lesser of a) the received value decremented by one (1) or b)
the recipient's maximum supported value for Max-Forwards.
A recipient MAY ignore a Max-Forwards header field received with any
other request methods.
7.6.3. Via
The "Via" header field indicates the presence of intermediate
protocols and recipients between the user agent and the server (on
requests) or between the origin server and the client (on responses),
similar to the "Received" header field in email (Section 3.6.7 of
[RFC5322]). Via can be used for tracking message forwards, avoiding
request loops, and identifying the protocol capabilities of senders
along the request/response chain.
Via = #( received-protocol RWS received-by [ RWS comment ] )
received-protocol = [ protocol-name "/" ] protocol-version
; see Section 7.8
received-by = pseudonym [ ":" port ]
pseudonym = token
Each member of the Via field value represents a proxy or gateway that
has forwarded the message. Each intermediary appends its own
information about how the message was received, such that the end
result is ordered according to the sequence of forwarding recipients.
A proxy MUST send an appropriate Via header field, as described
below, in each message that it forwards. An HTTP-to-HTTP gateway
MUST send an appropriate Via header field in each inbound request
message and MAY send a Via header field in forwarded response
messages.
For each intermediary, the received-protocol indicates the protocol
and protocol version used by the upstream sender of the message.
Hence, the Via field value records the advertised protocol
capabilities of the request/response chain such that they remain
visible to downstream recipients; this can be useful for determining
what backwards-incompatible features might be safe to use in
response, or within a later request, as described in Section 2.5.
For brevity, the protocol-name is omitted when the received protocol
is HTTP.
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The received-by portion is normally the host and optional port number
of a recipient server or client that subsequently forwarded the
message. However, if the real host is considered to be sensitive
information, a sender MAY replace it with a pseudonym. If a port is
not provided, a recipient MAY interpret that as meaning it was
received on the default port, if any, for the received-protocol.
A sender MAY generate comments to identify the software of each
recipient, analogous to the User-Agent and Server header fields.
However, comments in Via are optional, and a recipient MAY remove
them prior to forwarding the message.
For example, a request message could be sent from an HTTP/1.0 user
agent to an internal proxy code-named "fred", which uses HTTP/1.1 to
forward the request to a public proxy at p.example.net, which
completes the request by forwarding it to the origin server at
www.example.com. The request received by www.example.com would then
have the following Via header field:
Via: 1.0 fred, 1.1 p.example.net
An intermediary used as a portal through a network firewall SHOULD
NOT forward the names and ports of hosts within the firewall region
unless it is explicitly enabled to do so. If not enabled, such an
intermediary SHOULD replace each received-by host of any host behind
the firewall by an appropriate pseudonym for that host.
An intermediary MAY combine an ordered subsequence of Via header
field list members into a single member if the entries have identical
received-protocol values. For example,
Via: 1.0 ricky, 1.1 ethel, 1.1 fred, 1.0 lucy
could be collapsed to
Via: 1.0 ricky, 1.1 mertz, 1.0 lucy
A sender SHOULD NOT combine multiple list members unless they are all
under the same organizational control and the hosts have already been
replaced by pseudonyms. A sender MUST NOT combine members that have
different received-protocol values.
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7.7. Message Transformations
Some intermediaries include features for transforming messages and
their content. A proxy might, for example, convert between image
formats in order to save cache space or to reduce the amount of
traffic on a slow link. However, operational problems might occur
when these transformations are applied to content intended for
critical applications, such as medical imaging or scientific data
analysis, particularly when integrity checks or digital signatures
are used to ensure that the content received is identical to the
original.
An HTTP-to-HTTP proxy is called a _transforming proxy_ if it is
designed or configured to modify messages in a semantically
meaningful way (i.e., modifications, beyond those required by normal
HTTP processing, that change the message in a way that would be
significant to the original sender or potentially significant to
downstream recipients). For example, a transforming proxy might be
acting as a shared annotation server (modifying responses to include
references to a local annotation database), a malware filter, a
format transcoder, or a privacy filter. Such transformations are
presumed to be desired by whichever client (or client organization)
chose the proxy.
If a proxy receives a target URI with a host name that is not a fully
qualified domain name, it MAY add its own domain to the host name it
received when forwarding the request. A proxy MUST NOT change the
host name if the target URI contains a fully qualified domain name.
A proxy MUST NOT modify the "absolute-path" and "query" parts of the
received target URI when forwarding it to the next inbound server,
except as noted above to replace an empty path with "/" or "*".
A proxy MUST NOT transform the content (Section 6.4) of a message
that contains a no-transform cache-control response directive
(Section 5.2 of [CACHING]). Note that this does not include changes
to the message body that do not affect the content, such as transfer
codings (Section 7 of [HTTP/1.1]).
A proxy MAY transform the content of a message that does not contain
a no-transform cache-control directive. A proxy that transforms the
content of a 200 (OK) response can inform downstream recipients that
a transformation has been applied by changing the response status
code to 203 (Non-Authoritative Information) (Section 15.3.4).
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A proxy SHOULD NOT modify header fields that provide information
about the endpoints of the communication chain, the resource state,
or the selected representation (other than the content) unless the
field's definition specifically allows such modification or the
modification is deemed necessary for privacy or security.
7.8. Upgrade
The "Upgrade" header field is intended to provide a simple mechanism
for transitioning from HTTP/1.1 to some other protocol on the same
connection.
A client MAY send a list of protocol names in the Upgrade header
field of a request to invite the server to switch to one or more of
the named protocols, in order of descending preference, before
sending the final response. A server MAY ignore a received Upgrade
header field if it wishes to continue using the current protocol on
that connection. Upgrade cannot be used to insist on a protocol
change.
Upgrade = #protocol
protocol = protocol-name ["/" protocol-version]
protocol-name = token
protocol-version = token
Although protocol names are registered with a preferred case,
recipients SHOULD use case-insensitive comparison when matching each
protocol-name to supported protocols.
A server that sends a 101 (Switching Protocols) response MUST send an
Upgrade header field to indicate the new protocol(s) to which the
connection is being switched; if multiple protocol layers are being
switched, the sender MUST list the protocols in layer-ascending
order. A server MUST NOT switch to a protocol that was not indicated
by the client in the corresponding request's Upgrade header field. A
server MAY choose to ignore the order of preference indicated by the
client and select the new protocol(s) based on other factors, such as
the nature of the request or the current load on the server.
A server that sends a 426 (Upgrade Required) response MUST send an
Upgrade header field to indicate the acceptable protocols, in order
of descending preference.
A server MAY send an Upgrade header field in any other response to
advertise that it implements support for upgrading to the listed
protocols, in order of descending preference, when appropriate for a
future request.
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The following is a hypothetical example sent by a client:
GET /hello HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Connection: upgrade
Upgrade: websocket, IRC/6.9, RTA/x11
The capabilities and nature of the application-level communication
after the protocol change is entirely dependent upon the new
protocol(s) chosen. However, immediately after sending the 101
(Switching Protocols) response, the server is expected to continue
responding to the original request as if it had received its
equivalent within the new protocol (i.e., the server still has an
outstanding request to satisfy after the protocol has been changed,
and is expected to do so without requiring the request to be
repeated).
For example, if the Upgrade header field is received in a GET request
and the server decides to switch protocols, it first responds with a
101 (Switching Protocols) message in HTTP/1.1 and then immediately
follows that with the new protocol's equivalent of a response to a
GET on the target resource. This allows a connection to be upgraded
to protocols with the same semantics as HTTP without the latency cost
of an additional round trip. A server MUST NOT switch protocols
unless the received message semantics can be honored by the new
protocol; an OPTIONS request can be honored by any protocol.
The following is an example response to the above hypothetical
request:
HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols
Connection: upgrade
Upgrade: websocket
[... data stream switches to websocket with an appropriate response
(as defined by new protocol) to the "GET /hello" request ...]
A sender of Upgrade MUST also send an "Upgrade" connection option in
the Connection header field (Section 7.6.1) to inform intermediaries
not to forward this field. A server that receives an Upgrade header
field in an HTTP/1.0 request MUST ignore that Upgrade field.
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A client cannot begin using an upgraded protocol on the connection
until it has completely sent the request message (i.e., the client
can't change the protocol it is sending in the middle of a message).
If a server receives both an Upgrade and an Expect header field with
the "100-continue" expectation (Section 10.1.1), the server MUST send
a 100 (Continue) response before sending a 101 (Switching Protocols)
response.
The Upgrade header field only applies to switching protocols on top
of the existing connection; it cannot be used to switch the
underlying connection (transport) protocol, nor to switch the
existing communication to a different connection. For those
purposes, it is more appropriate to use a 3xx (Redirection) response
(Section 15.4).
This specification only defines the protocol name "HTTP" for use by
the family of Hypertext Transfer Protocols, as defined by the HTTP
version rules of Section 2.5 and future updates to this
specification. Additional protocol names ought to be registered
using the registration procedure defined in Section 16.7.
8. Representation Data and Metadata
8.1. Representation Data
The representation data associated with an HTTP message is either
provided as the content of the message or referred to by the message
semantics and the target URI. The representation data is in a format
and encoding defined by the representation metadata header fields.
The data type of the representation data is determined via the header
fields Content-Type and Content-Encoding. These define a two-layer,
ordered encoding model:
representation-data := Content-Encoding( Content-Type( data ) )
8.2. Representation Metadata
Representation header fields provide metadata about the
representation. When a message includes content, the representation
header fields describe how to interpret that data. In a response to
a HEAD request, the representation header fields describe the
representation data that would have been enclosed in the content if
the same request had been a GET.
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8.3. Content-Type
The "Content-Type" header field indicates the media type of the
associated representation: either the representation enclosed in the
message content or the selected representation, as determined by the
message semantics. The indicated media type defines both the data
format and how that data is intended to be processed by a recipient,
within the scope of the received message semantics, after any content
codings indicated by Content-Encoding are decoded.
Content-Type = media-type
Media types are defined in Section 8.3.1. An example of the field is
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-4
A sender that generates a message containing content SHOULD generate
a Content-Type header field in that message unless the intended media
type of the enclosed representation is unknown to the sender. If a
Content-Type header field is not present, the recipient MAY either
assume a media type of "application/octet-stream" ([RFC2046],
Section 4.5.1) or examine the data to determine its type.
In practice, resource owners do not always properly configure their
origin server to provide the correct Content-Type for a given
representation. Some user agents examine the content and, in certain
cases, override the received type (for example, see [Sniffing]).
This "MIME sniffing" risks drawing incorrect conclusions about the
data, which might expose the user to additional security risks (e.g.,
"privilege escalation"). Furthermore, it is impossible to determine
the sender's intended processing model by examining the data format:
many data formats match multiple media types that differ only in
processing semantics. Implementers are encouraged to provide a means
to disable such sniffing.
Furthermore, although Content-Type is defined as a singleton field,
it is sometimes incorrectly generated multiple times, resulting in a
combined field value that appears to be a list. Recipients often
attempt to handle this error by using the last syntactically valid
member of the list, but note that some implementations might have
different error handling behaviors, leading to interoperability and/
or security issues.
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8.3.1. Media Type
HTTP uses media types [RFC2046] in the Content-Type (Section 8.3) and
Accept (Section 12.5.1) header fields in order to provide open and
extensible data typing and type negotiation. Media types define both
a data format and various processing models: how to process that data
in accordance with the message context.
media-type = type "/" subtype parameters
type = token
subtype = token
The type and subtype tokens are case-insensitive.
The type/subtype MAY be followed by semicolon-delimited parameters
(Section 5.6.6) in the form of name=value pairs. The presence or
absence of a parameter might be significant to the processing of a
media type, depending on its definition within the media type
registry. Parameter values might or might not be case-sensitive,
depending on the semantics of the parameter name.
For example, the following media types are equivalent in describing
HTML text data encoded in the UTF-8 character encoding scheme, but
the first is preferred for consistency (the "charset" parameter value
is defined as being case-insensitive in [RFC2046], Section 4.1.2):
text/html;charset=utf-8
Text/HTML;Charset="utf-8"
text/html; charset="utf-8"
text/html;charset=UTF-8
Media types ought to be registered with IANA according to the
procedures defined in [BCP13].
8.3.2. Charset
HTTP uses _charset_ names to indicate or negotiate the character
encoding scheme ([RFC6365], Section 1.3) of a textual representation.
In the fields defined by this document, charset names appear either
in parameters (Content-Type), or, for Accept-Encoding, in the form of
a plain token. In both cases, charset names are matched case-
insensitively.
Charset names ought to be registered in the IANA "Character Sets"
registry ()
according to the procedures defined in Section 2 of [RFC2978].
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| *Note:* In theory, charset names are defined by the "mime-
| charset" ABNF rule defined in Section 2.3 of [RFC2978] (as
| corrected in [Err1912]). That rule allows two characters that
| are not included in "token" ("{" and "}"), but no charset name
| registered at the time of this writing includes braces (see
| [Err5433]).
8.3.3. Multipart Types
MIME provides for a number of "multipart" types -- encapsulations of
one or more representations within a single message body. All
multipart types share a common syntax, as defined in Section 5.1.1 of
[RFC2046], and include a boundary parameter as part of the media type
value. The message body is itself a protocol element; a sender MUST
generate only CRLF to represent line breaks between body parts.
HTTP message framing does not use the multipart boundary as an
indicator of message body length, though it might be used by
implementations that generate or process the content. For example,
the "multipart/form-data" type is often used for carrying form data
in a request, as described in [RFC7578], and the "multipart/
byteranges" type is defined by this specification for use in some 206
(Partial Content) responses (see Section 15.3.7).
8.4. Content-Encoding
The "Content-Encoding" header field indicates what content codings
have been applied to the representation, beyond those inherent in the
media type, and thus what decoding mechanisms have to be applied in
order to obtain data in the media type referenced by the Content-Type
header field. Content-Encoding is primarily used to allow a
representation's data to be compressed without losing the identity of
its underlying media type.
Content-Encoding = #content-coding
An example of its use is
Content-Encoding: gzip
If one or more encodings have been applied to a representation, the
sender that applied the encodings MUST generate a Content-Encoding
header field that lists the content codings in the order in which
they were applied. Note that the coding named "identity" is reserved
for its special role in Accept-Encoding, and thus SHOULD NOT be
included.
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Additional information about the encoding parameters can be provided
by other header fields not defined by this specification.
Unlike Transfer-Encoding (Section 6.1 of [HTTP/1.1]), the codings
listed in Content-Encoding are a characteristic of the
representation; the representation is defined in terms of the coded
form, and all other metadata about the representation is about the
coded form unless otherwise noted in the metadata definition.
Typically, the representation is only decoded just prior to rendering
or analogous usage.
If the media type includes an inherent encoding, such as a data
format that is always compressed, then that encoding would not be
restated in Content-Encoding even if it happens to be the same
algorithm as one of the content codings. Such a content coding would
only be listed if, for some bizarre reason, it is applied a second
time to form the representation. Likewise, an origin server might
choose to publish the same data as multiple representations that
differ only in whether the coding is defined as part of Content-Type
or Content-Encoding, since some user agents will behave differently
in their handling of each response (e.g., open a "Save as ..." dialog
instead of automatic decompression and rendering of content).
An origin server MAY respond with a status code of 415 (Unsupported
Media Type) if a representation in the request message has a content
coding that is not acceptable.
8.4.1. Content Codings
Content coding values indicate an encoding transformation that has
been or can be applied to a representation. Content codings are
primarily used to allow a representation to be compressed or
otherwise usefully transformed without losing the identity of its
underlying media type and without loss of information. Frequently,
the representation is stored in coded form, transmitted directly, and
only decoded by the final recipient.
content-coding = token
All content codings are case-insensitive and ought to be registered
within the "HTTP Content Coding Registry", as described in
Section 16.6
Content-coding values are used in the Accept-Encoding
(Section 12.5.3) and Content-Encoding (Section 8.4) header fields.
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8.4.1.1. Compress Coding
The "compress" coding is an adaptive Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) coding
[Welch] that is commonly produced by the UNIX file compression
program "compress". A recipient SHOULD consider "x-compress" to be
equivalent to "compress".
8.4.1.2. Deflate Coding
The "deflate" coding is a "zlib" data format [RFC1950] containing a
"deflate" compressed data stream [RFC1951] that uses a combination of
the Lempel-Ziv (LZ77) compression algorithm and Huffman coding.
| *Note:* Some non-conformant implementations send the "deflate"
| compressed data without the zlib wrapper.
8.4.1.3. Gzip Coding
The "gzip" coding is an LZ77 coding with a 32-bit Cyclic Redundancy
Check (CRC) that is commonly produced by the gzip file compression
program [RFC1952]. A recipient SHOULD consider "x-gzip" to be
equivalent to "gzip".
8.5. Content-Language
The "Content-Language" header field describes the natural language(s)
of the intended audience for the representation. Note that this
might not be equivalent to all the languages used within the
representation.
Content-Language = #language-tag
Language tags are defined in Section 8.5.1. The primary purpose of
Content-Language is to allow a user to identify and differentiate
representations according to the users' own preferred language.
Thus, if the content is intended only for a Danish-literate audience,
the appropriate field is
Content-Language: da
If no Content-Language is specified, the default is that the content
is intended for all language audiences. This might mean that the
sender does not consider it to be specific to any natural language,
or that the sender does not know for which language it is intended.
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Multiple languages MAY be listed for content that is intended for
multiple audiences. For example, a rendition of the "Treaty of
Waitangi", presented simultaneously in the original Maori and English
versions, would call for
Content-Language: mi, en
However, just because multiple languages are present within a
representation does not mean that it is intended for multiple
linguistic audiences. An example would be a beginner's language
primer, such as "A First Lesson in Latin", which is clearly intended
to be used by an English-literate audience. In this case, the
Content-Language would properly only include "en".
Content-Language MAY be applied to any media type -- it is not
limited to textual documents.
8.5.1. Language Tags
A language tag, as defined in [RFC5646], identifies a natural
language spoken, written, or otherwise conveyed by human beings for
communication of information to other human beings. Computer
languages are explicitly excluded.
HTTP uses language tags within the Accept-Language and
Content-Language header fields. Accept-Language uses the broader
language-range production defined in Section 12.5.4, whereas
Content-Language uses the language-tag production defined below.
language-tag =
A language tag is a sequence of one or more case-insensitive subtags,
each separated by a hyphen character ("-", %x2D). In most cases, a
language tag consists of a primary language subtag that identifies a
broad family of related languages (e.g., "en" = English), which is
optionally followed by a series of subtags that refine or narrow that
language's range (e.g., "en-CA" = the variety of English as
communicated in Canada). Whitespace is not allowed within a language
tag. Example tags include:
fr, en-US, es-419, az-Arab, x-pig-latin, man-Nkoo-GN
See [RFC5646] for further information.
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8.6. Content-Length
The "Content-Length" header field indicates the associated
representation's data length as a decimal non-negative integer number
of octets. When transferring a representation as content, Content-
Length refers specifically to the amount of data enclosed so that it
can be used to delimit framing (e.g., Section 6.2 of [HTTP/1.1]). In
other cases, Content-Length indicates the selected representation's
current length, which can be used by recipients to estimate transfer
time or compare to previously stored representations.
Content-Length = 1*DIGIT
An example is
Content-Length: 3495
A user agent SHOULD send Content-Length in a request when the method
defines a meaning for enclosed content and it is not sending
Transfer-Encoding. For example, a user agent normally sends Content-
Length in a POST request even when the value is 0 (indicating empty
content). A user agent SHOULD NOT send a Content-Length header field
when the request message does not contain content and the method
semantics do not anticipate such data.
A server MAY send a Content-Length header field in a response to a
HEAD request (Section 9.3.2); a server MUST NOT send Content-Length
in such a response unless its field value equals the decimal number
of octets that would have been sent in the content of a response if
the same request had used the GET method.
A server MAY send a Content-Length header field in a 304 (Not
Modified) response to a conditional GET request (Section 15.4.5); a
server MUST NOT send Content-Length in such a response unless its
field value equals the decimal number of octets that would have been
sent in the content of a 200 (OK) response to the same request.
A server MUST NOT send a Content-Length header field in any response
with a status code of 1xx (Informational) or 204 (No Content). A
server MUST NOT send a Content-Length header field in any 2xx
(Successful) response to a CONNECT request (Section 9.3.6).
Aside from the cases defined above, in the absence of Transfer-
Encoding, an origin server SHOULD send a Content-Length header field
when the content size is known prior to sending the complete header
section. This will allow downstream recipients to measure transfer
progress, know when a received message is complete, and potentially
reuse the connection for additional requests.
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Any Content-Length field value greater than or equal to zero is
valid. Since there is no predefined limit to the length of content,
a recipient MUST anticipate potentially large decimal numerals and
prevent parsing errors due to integer conversion overflows or
precision loss due to integer conversion (Section 17.5).
Because Content-Length is used for message delimitation in HTTP/1.1,
its field value can impact how the message is parsed by downstream
recipients even when the immediate connection is not using HTTP/1.1.
If the message is forwarded by a downstream intermediary, a Content-
Length field value that is inconsistent with the received message
framing might cause a security failure due to request smuggling or
response splitting.
As a result, a sender MUST NOT forward a message with a Content-
Length header field value that is known to be incorrect.
Likewise, a sender MUST NOT forward a message with a Content-Length
header field value that does not match the ABNF above, with one
exception: A recipient of a Content-Length header field value
consisting of the same decimal value repeated as a comma-separated
list (e.g, "Content-Length: 42, 42"), MAY either reject the message
as invalid or replace that invalid field value with a single instance
of the decimal value, since this likely indicates that a duplicate
was generated or combined by an upstream message processor.
8.7. Content-Location
The "Content-Location" header field references a URI that can be used
as an identifier for a specific resource corresponding to the
representation in this message's content. In other words, if one
were to perform a GET request on this URI at the time of this
message's generation, then a 200 (OK) response would contain the same
representation that is enclosed as content in this message.
Content-Location = absolute-URI / partial-URI
The field value is either an absolute-URI or a partial-URI. In the
latter case (Section 4), the referenced URI is relative to the target
URI ([URI], Section 5).
The Content-Location value is not a replacement for the target URI
(Section 7.1). It is representation metadata. It has the same
syntax and semantics as the header field of the same name defined for
MIME body parts in Section 4 of [RFC2557]. However, its appearance
in an HTTP message has some special implications for HTTP recipients.
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If Content-Location is included in a 2xx (Successful) response
message and its value refers (after conversion to absolute form) to a
URI that is the same as the target URI, then the recipient MAY
consider the content to be a current representation of that resource
at the time indicated by the message origination date. For a GET
(Section 9.3.1) or HEAD (Section 9.3.2) request, this is the same as
the default semantics when no Content-Location is provided by the
server. For a state-changing request like PUT (Section 9.3.4) or
POST (Section 9.3.3), it implies that the server's response contains
the new representation of that resource, thereby distinguishing it
from representations that might only report about the action (e.g.,
"It worked!"). This allows authoring applications to update their
local copies without the need for a subsequent GET request.
If Content-Location is included in a 2xx (Successful) response
message and its field value refers to a URI that differs from the
target URI, then the origin server claims that the URI is an
identifier for a different resource corresponding to the enclosed
representation. Such a claim can only be trusted if both identifiers
share the same resource owner, which cannot be programmatically
determined via HTTP.
o For a response to a GET or HEAD request, this is an indication
that the target URI refers to a resource that is subject to
content negotiation and the Content-Location field value is a more
specific identifier for the selected representation.
o For a 201 (Created) response to a state-changing method, a
Content-Location field value that is identical to the Location
field value indicates that this content is a current
representation of the newly created resource.
o Otherwise, such a Content-Location indicates that this content is
a representation reporting on the requested action's status and
that the same report is available (for future access with GET) at
the given URI. For example, a purchase transaction made via a
POST request might include a receipt document as the content of
the 200 (OK) response; the Content-Location field value provides
an identifier for retrieving a copy of that same receipt in the
future.
A user agent that sends Content-Location in a request message is
stating that its value refers to where the user agent originally
obtained the content of the enclosed representation (prior to any
modifications made by that user agent). In other words, the user
agent is providing a back link to the source of the original
representation.
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An origin server that receives a Content-Location field in a request
message MUST treat the information as transitory request context
rather than as metadata to be saved verbatim as part of the
representation. An origin server MAY use that context to guide in
processing the request or to save it for other uses, such as within
source links or versioning metadata. However, an origin server MUST
NOT use such context information to alter the request semantics.
For example, if a client makes a PUT request on a negotiated resource
and the origin server accepts that PUT (without redirection), then
the new state of that resource is expected to be consistent with the
one representation supplied in that PUT; the Content-Location cannot
be used as a form of reverse content selection identifier to update
only one of the negotiated representations. If the user agent had
wanted the latter semantics, it would have applied the PUT directly
to the Content-Location URI.
8.8. Validator Fields
Validator fields convey metadata about the selected representation
(Section 3.2). In responses to safe requests, validator fields
describe the selected representation chosen by the origin server
while handling the response. Note that, depending on the status code
semantics, the selected representation for a given response is not
necessarily the same as the representation enclosed as response
content.
In a successful response to a state-changing request, validator
fields describe the new representation that has replaced the prior
selected representation as a result of processing the request.
For example, an ETag field in a 201 (Created) response communicates
the entity-tag of the newly created resource's representation, so
that it can be used in later conditional requests to prevent the
"lost update" problem (Section 13.1).
This specification defines two forms of metadata that are commonly
used to observe resource state and test for preconditions:
modification dates (Section 8.8.2) and opaque entity tags
(Section 8.8.3). Additional metadata that reflects resource state
has been defined by various extensions of HTTP, such as Web
Distributed Authoring and Versioning [WEBDAV], that are beyond the
scope of this specification. A resource metadata value is referred
to as a _validator_ when it is used within a precondition.
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8.8.1. Weak versus Strong
Validators come in two flavors: strong or weak. Weak validators are
easy to generate but are far less useful for comparisons. Strong
validators are ideal for comparisons but can be very difficult (and
occasionally impossible) to generate efficiently. Rather than impose
that all forms of resource adhere to the same strength of validator,
HTTP exposes the type of validator in use and imposes restrictions on
when weak validators can be used as preconditions.
A _strong validator_ is representation metadata that changes value
whenever a change occurs to the representation data that would be
observable in the content of a 200 (OK) response to GET.
A strong validator might change for reasons other than a change to
the representation data, such as when a semantically significant part
of the representation metadata is changed (e.g., Content-Type), but
it is in the best interests of the origin server to only change the
value when it is necessary to invalidate the stored responses held by
remote caches and authoring tools.
Cache entries might persist for arbitrarily long periods, regardless
of expiration times. Thus, a cache might attempt to validate an
entry using a validator that it obtained in the distant past. A
strong validator is unique across all versions of all representations
associated with a particular resource over time. However, there is
no implication of uniqueness across representations of different
resources (i.e., the same strong validator might be in use for
representations of multiple resources at the same time and does not
imply that those representations are equivalent).
There are a variety of strong validators used in practice. The best
are based on strict revision control, wherein each change to a
representation always results in a unique node name and revision
identifier being assigned before the representation is made
accessible to GET. A collision-resistant hash function applied to
the representation data is also sufficient if the data is available
prior to the response header fields being sent and the digest does
not need to be recalculated every time a validation request is
received. However, if a resource has distinct representations that
differ only in their metadata, such as might occur with content
negotiation over media types that happen to share the same data
format, then the origin server needs to incorporate additional
information in the validator to distinguish those representations.
In contrast, a _weak validator_ is representation metadata that might
not change for every change to the representation data. This
weakness might be due to limitations in how the value is calculated,
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such as clock resolution, an inability to ensure uniqueness for all
possible representations of the resource, or a desire of the resource
owner to group representations by some self-determined set of
equivalency rather than unique sequences of data. An origin server
SHOULD change a weak entity-tag whenever it considers prior
representations to be unacceptable as a substitute for the current
representation. In other words, a weak entity-tag ought to change
whenever the origin server wants caches to invalidate old responses.
For example, the representation of a weather report that changes in
content every second, based on dynamic measurements, might be grouped
into sets of equivalent representations (from the origin server's
perspective) with the same weak validator in order to allow cached
representations to be valid for a reasonable period of time (perhaps
adjusted dynamically based on server load or weather quality).
Likewise, a representation's modification time, if defined with only
one-second resolution, might be a weak validator if it is possible
for the representation to be modified twice during a single second
and retrieved between those modifications.
Likewise, a validator is weak if it is shared by two or more
representations of a given resource at the same time, unless those
representations have identical representation data. For example, if
the origin server sends the same validator for a representation with
a gzip content coding applied as it does for a representation with no
content coding, then that validator is weak. However, two
simultaneous representations might share the same strong validator if
they differ only in the representation metadata, such as when two
different media types are available for the same representation data.
Strong validators are usable for all conditional requests, including
cache validation, partial content ranges, and "lost update"
avoidance. Weak validators are only usable when the client does not
require exact equality with previously obtained representation data,
such as when validating a cache entry or limiting a web traversal to
recent changes.
8.8.2. Last-Modified
The "Last-Modified" header field in a response provides a timestamp
indicating the date and time at which the origin server believes the
selected representation was last modified, as determined at the
conclusion of handling the request.
Last-Modified = HTTP-date
An example of its use is
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Last-Modified: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 12:45:26 GMT
8.8.2.1. Generation
An origin server SHOULD send Last-Modified for any selected
representation for which a last modification date can be reasonably
and consistently determined, since its use in conditional requests
and evaluating cache freshness ([CACHING]) can substantially reduce
unnecessary transfers and significantly improve service availability
and scalability.
A representation is typically the sum of many parts behind the
resource interface. The last-modified time would usually be the most
recent time that any of those parts were changed. How that value is
determined for any given resource is an implementation detail beyond
the scope of this specification.
An origin server SHOULD obtain the Last-Modified value of the
representation as close as possible to the time that it generates the
Date field value for its response. This allows a recipient to make
an accurate assessment of the representation's modification time,
especially if the representation changes near the time that the
response is generated.
An origin server with a clock MUST NOT send a Last-Modified date that
is later than the server's time of message origination (Date). If
the last modification time is derived from implementation-specific
metadata that evaluates to some time in the future, according to the
origin server's clock, then the origin server MUST replace that value
with the message origination date. This prevents a future
modification date from having an adverse impact on cache validation.
An origin server without a clock MUST NOT assign Last-Modified values
to a response unless these values were associated with the resource
by some other system or user with a reliable clock.
8.8.2.2. Comparison
A Last-Modified time, when used as a validator in a request, is
implicitly weak unless it is possible to deduce that it is strong,
using the following rules:
o The validator is being compared by an origin server to the actual
current validator for the representation and,
o That origin server reliably knows that the associated
representation did not change twice during the second covered by
the presented validator;
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or
o The validator is about to be used by a client in an
If-Modified-Since, If-Unmodified-Since, or If-Range header field,
because the client has a cache entry for the associated
representation, and
o That cache entry includes a Date value which is at least one
second after the Last-Modified value and the client has reason to
believe that they were generated by the same clock or that there
is enough difference between the Last-Modified and Date values to
make clock synchronization issues unlikely;
or
o The validator is being compared by an intermediate cache to the
validator stored in its cache entry for the representation, and
o That cache entry includes a Date value which is at least one
second after the Last-Modified value and the cache has reason to
believe that they were generated by the same clock or that there
is enough difference between the Last-Modified and Date values to
make clock synchronization issues unlikely.
This method relies on the fact that if two different responses were
sent by the origin server during the same second, but both had the
same Last-Modified time, then at least one of those responses would
have a Date value equal to its Last-Modified time.
8.8.3. ETag
The "ETag" field in a response provides the current entity-tag for
the selected representation, as determined at the conclusion of
handling the request. An entity-tag is an opaque validator for
differentiating between multiple representations of the same
resource, regardless of whether those multiple representations are
due to resource state changes over time, content negotiation
resulting in multiple representations being valid at the same time,
or both. An entity-tag consists of an opaque quoted string, possibly
prefixed by a weakness indicator.
ETag = entity-tag
entity-tag = [ weak ] opaque-tag
weak = %s"W/"
opaque-tag = DQUOTE *etagc DQUOTE
etagc = %x21 / %x23-7E / obs-text
; VCHAR except double quotes, plus obs-text
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| *Note:* Previously, opaque-tag was defined to be a quoted-
| string ([RFC2616], Section 3.11); thus, some recipients might
| perform backslash unescaping. Servers therefore ought to avoid
| backslash characters in entity tags.
An entity-tag can be more reliable for validation than a modification
date in situations where it is inconvenient to store modification
dates, where the one-second resolution of HTTP date values is not
sufficient, or where modification dates are not consistently
maintained.
Examples:
ETag: "xyzzy"
ETag: W/"xyzzy"
ETag: ""
An entity-tag can be either a weak or strong validator, with strong
being the default. If an origin server provides an entity-tag for a
representation and the generation of that entity-tag does not satisfy
all of the characteristics of a strong validator (Section 8.8.1),
then the origin server MUST mark the entity-tag as weak by prefixing
its opaque value with "W/" (case-sensitive).
A sender MAY send the Etag field in a trailer section (see
Section 6.5). However, since trailers are often ignored, it is
preferable to send Etag as a header field unless the entity-tag is
generated while sending the content.
8.8.3.1. Generation
The principle behind entity-tags is that only the service author
knows the implementation of a resource well enough to select the most
accurate and efficient validation mechanism for that resource, and
that any such mechanism can be mapped to a simple sequence of octets
for easy comparison. Since the value is opaque, there is no need for
the client to be aware of how each entity-tag is constructed.
For example, a resource that has implementation-specific versioning
applied to all changes might use an internal revision number, perhaps
combined with a variance identifier for content negotiation, to
accurately differentiate between representations. Other
implementations might use a collision-resistant hash of
representation content, a combination of various file attributes, or
a modification timestamp that has sub-second resolution.
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An origin server SHOULD send an ETag for any selected representation
for which detection of changes can be reasonably and consistently
determined, since the entity-tag's use in conditional requests and
evaluating cache freshness ([CACHING]) can substantially reduce
unnecessary transfers and significantly improve service availability,
scalability, and reliability.
8.8.3.2. Comparison
There are two entity-tag comparison functions, depending on whether
or not the comparison context allows the use of weak validators:
_Strong comparison_: two entity-tags are equivalent if both are not
weak and their opaque-tags match character-by-character.
_Weak comparison_: two entity-tags are equivalent if their opaque-
tags match character-by-character, regardless of either or both
being tagged as "weak".
The example below shows the results for a set of entity-tag pairs and
both the weak and strong comparison function results:
+--------+--------+-------------------+-----------------+
| ETag 1 | ETag 2 | Strong Comparison | Weak Comparison |
+--------+--------+-------------------+-----------------+
| W/"1" | W/"1" | no match | match |
| W/"1" | W/"2" | no match | no match |
| W/"1" | "1" | no match | match |
| "1" | "1" | match | match |
+--------+--------+-------------------+-----------------+
Table 3
8.8.3.3. Example: Entity-Tags Varying on Content-Negotiated Resources
Consider a resource that is subject to content negotiation
(Section 12), and where the representations sent in response to a GET
request vary based on the Accept-Encoding request header field
(Section 12.5.3):
>> Request:
GET /index HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Accept-Encoding: gzip
In this case, the response might or might not use the gzip content
coding. If it does not, the response might look like:
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>> Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:05:00 GMT
ETag: "123-a"
Content-Length: 70
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/plain
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
An alternative representation that does use gzip content coding would
be:
>> Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:05:00 GMT
ETag: "123-b"
Content-Length: 43
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Encoding: gzip
...binary data...
| *Note:* Content codings are a property of the representation
| data, so a strong entity-tag for a content-encoded
| representation has to be distinct from the entity tag of an
| unencoded representation to prevent potential conflicts during
| cache updates and range requests. In contrast, transfer
| codings (Section 7 of [HTTP/1.1]) apply only during message
| transfer and do not result in distinct entity-tags.
8.8.4. When to Use Entity-Tags and Last-Modified Dates
In 200 (OK) responses to GET or HEAD, an origin server:
o SHOULD send an entity-tag validator unless it is not feasible to
generate one.
o MAY send a weak entity-tag instead of a strong entity-tag, if
performance considerations support the use of weak entity-tags, or
if it is unfeasible to send a strong entity-tag.
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o SHOULD send a Last-Modified value if it is feasible to send one.
In other words, the preferred behavior for an origin server is to
send both a strong entity-tag and a Last-Modified value in successful
responses to a retrieval request.
A client:
o MUST send that entity-tag in any cache validation request (using
If-Match or If-None-Match) if an entity-tag has been provided by
the origin server.
o SHOULD send the Last-Modified value in non-subrange cache
validation requests (using If-Modified-Since) if only a Last-
Modified value has been provided by the origin server.
o MAY send the Last-Modified value in subrange cache validation
requests (using If-Unmodified-Since) if only a Last-Modified value
has been provided by an HTTP/1.0 origin server. The user agent
SHOULD provide a way to disable this, in case of difficulty.
o SHOULD send both validators in cache validation requests if both
an entity-tag and a Last-Modified value have been provided by the
origin server. This allows both HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 caches to
respond appropriately.
9. Methods
9.1. Overview
The request method token is the primary source of request semantics;
it indicates the purpose for which the client has made this request
and what is expected by the client as a successful result.
The request method's semantics might be further specialized by the
semantics of some header fields when present in a request if those
additional semantics do not conflict with the method. For example, a
client can send conditional request header fields (Section 13.1) to
make the requested action conditional on the current state of the
target resource.
HTTP is designed to be usable as an interface to distributed object
systems. The request method invokes an action to be applied to a
target resource in much the same way that a remote method invocation
can be sent to an identified object.
method = token
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The method token is case-sensitive because it might be used as a
gateway to object-based systems with case-sensitive method names. By
convention, standardized methods are defined in all-uppercase US-
ASCII letters.
Unlike distributed objects, the standardized request methods in HTTP
are not resource-specific, since uniform interfaces provide for
better visibility and reuse in network-based systems [REST]. Once
defined, a standardized method ought to have the same semantics when
applied to any resource, though each resource determines for itself
whether those semantics are implemented or allowed.
This specification defines a number of standardized methods that are
commonly used in HTTP, as outlined by the following table.
+---------+--------------------------------------------+-------+
| Method | Description | Ref. |
+---------+--------------------------------------------+-------+
| GET | Transfer a current representation of the | 9.3.1 |
| | target resource. | |
| HEAD | Same as GET, but do not transfer the | 9.3.2 |
| | response content. | |
| POST | Perform resource-specific processing on | 9.3.3 |
| | the request content. | |
| PUT | Replace all current representations of the | 9.3.4 |
| | target resource with the request content. | |
| DELETE | Remove all current representations of the | 9.3.5 |
| | target resource. | |
| CONNECT | Establish a tunnel to the server | 9.3.6 |
| | identified by the target resource. | |
| OPTIONS | Describe the communication options for the | 9.3.7 |
| | target resource. | |
| TRACE | Perform a message loop-back test along the | 9.3.8 |
| | path to the target resource. | |
+---------+--------------------------------------------+-------+
Table 4
All general-purpose servers MUST support the methods GET and HEAD.
All other methods are OPTIONAL.
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The set of methods allowed by a target resource can be listed in an
Allow header field (Section 10.2.1). However, the set of allowed
methods can change dynamically. An origin server that receives a
request method that is unrecognized or not implemented SHOULD respond
with the 501 (Not Implemented) status code. An origin server that
receives a request method that is recognized and implemented, but not
allowed for the target resource, SHOULD respond with the 405 (Method
Not Allowed) status code.
Additional methods, outside the scope of this specification, have
been specified for use in HTTP. All such methods ought to be
registered within the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Method
Registry", as described in Section 16.1.
9.2. Common Method Properties
9.2.1. Safe Methods
Request methods are considered _safe_ if their defined semantics are
essentially read-only; i.e., the client does not request, and does
not expect, any state change on the origin server as a result of
applying a safe method to a target resource. Likewise, reasonable
use of a safe method is not expected to cause any harm, loss of
property, or unusual burden on the origin server.
This definition of safe methods does not prevent an implementation
from including behavior that is potentially harmful, that is not
entirely read-only, or that causes side effects while invoking a safe
method. What is important, however, is that the client did not
request that additional behavior and cannot be held accountable for
it. For example, most servers append request information to access
log files at the completion of every response, regardless of the
method, and that is considered safe even though the log storage might
become full and cause the server to fail. Likewise, a safe request
initiated by selecting an advertisement on the Web will often have
the side effect of charging an advertising account.
Of the request methods defined by this specification, the GET, HEAD,
OPTIONS, and TRACE methods are defined to be safe.
The purpose of distinguishing between safe and unsafe methods is to
allow automated retrieval processes (spiders) and cache performance
optimization (pre-fetching) to work without fear of causing harm. In
addition, it allows a user agent to apply appropriate constraints on
the automated use of unsafe methods when processing potentially
untrusted content.
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A user agent SHOULD distinguish between safe and unsafe methods when
presenting potential actions to a user, such that the user can be
made aware of an unsafe action before it is requested.
When a resource is constructed such that parameters within the target
URI have the effect of selecting an action, it is the resource
owner's responsibility to ensure that the action is consistent with
the request method semantics. For example, it is common for Web-
based content editing software to use actions within query
parameters, such as "page?do=delete". If the purpose of such a
resource is to perform an unsafe action, then the resource owner MUST
disable or disallow that action when it is accessed using a safe
request method. Failure to do so will result in unfortunate side
effects when automated processes perform a GET on every URI reference
for the sake of link maintenance, pre-fetching, building a search
index, etc.
9.2.2. Idempotent Methods
A request method is considered _idempotent_ if the intended effect on
the server of multiple identical requests with that method is the
same as the effect for a single such request. Of the request methods
defined by this specification, PUT, DELETE, and safe request methods
are idempotent.
Like the definition of safe, the idempotent property only applies to
what has been requested by the user; a server is free to log each
request separately, retain a revision control history, or implement
other non-idempotent side effects for each idempotent request.
Idempotent methods are distinguished because the request can be
repeated automatically if a communication failure occurs before the
client is able to read the server's response. For example, if a
client sends a PUT request and the underlying connection is closed
before any response is received, then the client can establish a new
connection and retry the idempotent request. It knows that repeating
the request will have the same intended effect, even if the original
request succeeded, though the response might differ.
A client SHOULD NOT automatically retry a request with a non-
idempotent method unless it has some means to know that the request
semantics are actually idempotent, regardless of the method, or some
means to detect that the original request was never applied.
For example, a user agent can repeat a POST request automatically if
it knows (through design or configuration) that the request is safe
for that resource. Likewise, a user agent designed specifically to
operate on a version control repository might be able to recover from
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partial failure conditions by checking the target resource
revision(s) after a failed connection, reverting or fixing any
changes that were partially applied, and then automatically retrying
the requests that failed.
Some clients take a riskier approach and attempt to guess when an
automatic retry is possible. For example, a client might
automatically retry a POST request if the underlying transport
connection closed before any part of a response is received,
particularly if an idle persistent connection was used.
A proxy MUST NOT automatically retry non-idempotent requests. A
client SHOULD NOT automatically retry a failed automatic retry.
9.2.3. Methods and Caching
For a cache to store and use a response, the associated method needs
to explicitly allow caching, and detail under what conditions a
response can be used to satisfy subsequent requests; a method
definition which does not do so cannot be cached. For additional
requirements see [CACHING].
This specification defines caching semantics for GET, HEAD, and POST,
although the overwhelming majority of cache implementations only
support GET and HEAD.
9.3. Method Definitions
9.3.1. GET
The GET method requests transfer of a current selected representation
for the target resource. A successful response reflects the quality
of "sameness" identified by the target URI (Section 1.2.2 of [URI]).
Hence, retrieving identifiable information via HTTP is usually
performed by making a GET request on an identifier associated with
the potential for providing that information in a 200 (OK) response.
GET is the primary mechanism of information retrieval and the focus
of almost all performance optimizations. Applications that produce a
URI for each important resource can benefit from those optimizations
while enabling their reuse by other applications, creating a network
effect that promotes further expansion of the Web.
It is tempting to think of resource identifiers as remote file system
pathnames and of representations as being a copy of the contents of
such files. In fact, that is how many resources are implemented (see
Section 17.3 for related security considerations). However, there
are no such limitations in practice.
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The HTTP interface for a resource is just as likely to be implemented
as a tree of content objects, a programmatic view on various database
records, or a gateway to other information systems. Even when the
URI mapping mechanism is tied to a file system, an origin server
might be configured to execute the files with the request as input
and send the output as the representation rather than transfer the
files directly. Regardless, only the origin server needs to know how
each resource identifier corresponds to an implementation and how
that implementation manages to select and send a current
representation of the target resource.
A client can alter the semantics of GET to be a "range request",
requesting transfer of only some part(s) of the selected
representation, by sending a Range header field in the request
(Section 14.2).
Although request message framing is independent of the method used,
content received in a GET request has no generally defined semantics,
cannot alter the meaning or target of the request, and might lead
some implementations to reject the request and close the connection
because of its potential as a request smuggling attack (Section 11.2
of [HTTP/1.1]). A client SHOULD NOT generate content in a GET
request unless it is made directly to an origin server that has
previously indicated, in or out of band, that such a request has a
purpose and will be adequately supported. An origin server SHOULD
NOT rely on private agreements to receive content, since participants
in HTTP communication are often unaware of intermediaries along the
request chain.
The response to a GET request is cacheable; a cache MAY use it to
satisfy subsequent GET and HEAD requests unless otherwise indicated
by the Cache-Control header field (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]).
When information retrieval is performed with a mechanism that
constructs a target URI from user-provided information, such as the
query fields of a form using GET, potentially sensitive data might be
provided that would not be appropriate for disclosure within a URI
(see Section 17.9). In some cases, the data can be filtered or
transformed such that it would not reveal such information. In
others, particularly when there is no benefit from caching a
response, using the POST method (Section 9.3.3) instead of GET can
transmit such information in the request content rather than within
the target URI.
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9.3.2. HEAD
The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT
send content in the response. HEAD is used to obtain metadata about
the selected representation without transferring its representation
data, often for the sake of testing hypertext links or finding recent
modifications.
The server SHOULD send the same header fields in response to a HEAD
request as it would have sent if the request method had been GET.
However, a server MAY omit header fields for which a value is
determined only while generating the content. For example, some
servers buffer a dynamic response to GET until a minimum amount of
data is generated so that they can more efficiently delimit small
responses or make late decisions with regard to content selection.
Such a response to GET might contain Content-Length and Vary fields,
for example, that are not generated within a HEAD response. These
minor inconsistencies are considered preferable to generating and
discarding the content for a HEAD request, since HEAD is usually
requested for the sake of efficiency.
Although request message framing is independent of the method used,
content received in a HEAD request has no generally defined
semantics, cannot alter the meaning or target of the request, and
might lead some implementations to reject the request and close the
connection because of its potential as a request smuggling attack
(Section 11.2 of [HTTP/1.1]). A client SHOULD NOT generate content
in a HEAD request unless it is made directly to an origin server that
has previously indicated, in or out of band, that such a request has
a purpose and will be adequately supported. An origin server SHOULD
NOT rely on private agreements to receive content, since participants
in HTTP communication are often unaware of intermediaries along the
request chain.
The response to a HEAD request is cacheable; a cache MAY use it to
satisfy subsequent HEAD requests unless otherwise indicated by the
Cache-Control header field (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]). A HEAD
response might also affect previously cached responses to GET; see
Section 4.3.5 of [CACHING].
9.3.3. POST
The POST method requests that the target resource process the
representation enclosed in the request according to the resource's
own specific semantics. For example, POST is used for the following
functions (among others):
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o Providing a block of data, such as the fields entered into an HTML
form, to a data-handling process;
o Posting a message to a bulletin board, newsgroup, mailing list,
blog, or similar group of articles;
o Creating a new resource that has yet to be identified by the
origin server; and
o Appending data to a resource's existing representation(s).
An origin server indicates response semantics by choosing an
appropriate status code depending on the result of processing the
POST request; almost all of the status codes defined by this
specification could be received in a response to POST (the exceptions
being 206 (Partial Content), 304 (Not Modified), and 416 (Range Not
Satisfiable)).
If one or more resources has been created on the origin server as a
result of successfully processing a POST request, the origin server
SHOULD send a 201 (Created) response containing a Location header
field that provides an identifier for the primary resource created
(Section 10.2.3) and a representation that describes the status of
the request while referring to the new resource(s).
Responses to POST requests are only cacheable when they include
explicit freshness information (see Section 4.2.1 of [CACHING]) and a
Content-Location header field that has the same value as the POST's
target URI (Section 8.7). A cached POST response can be reused to
satisfy a later GET or HEAD request, but not a POST request, since
POST is required to be written through to the origin server, because
it is unsafe; see Section 4 of [CACHING].
If the result of processing a POST would be equivalent to a
representation of an existing resource, an origin server MAY redirect
the user agent to that resource by sending a 303 (See Other) response
with the existing resource's identifier in the Location field. This
has the benefits of providing the user agent a resource identifier
and transferring the representation via a method more amenable to
shared caching, though at the cost of an extra request if the user
agent does not already have the representation cached.
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9.3.4. PUT
The PUT method requests that the state of the target resource be
created or replaced with the state defined by the representation
enclosed in the request message content. A successful PUT of a given
representation would suggest that a subsequent GET on that same
target resource will result in an equivalent representation being
sent in a 200 (OK) response. However, there is no guarantee that
such a state change will be observable, since the target resource
might be acted upon by other user agents in parallel, or might be
subject to dynamic processing by the origin server, before any
subsequent GET is received. A successful response only implies that
the user agent's intent was achieved at the time of its processing by
the origin server.
If the target resource does not have a current representation and the
PUT successfully creates one, then the origin server MUST inform the
user agent by sending a 201 (Created) response. If the target
resource does have a current representation and that representation
is successfully modified in accordance with the state of the enclosed
representation, then the origin server MUST send either a 200 (OK) or
a 204 (No Content) response to indicate successful completion of the
request.
An origin server SHOULD verify that the PUT representation is
consistent with its configured constraints for the target resource.
For example, if an origin server determines a resource's
representation metadata based on the URI, then the origin server
needs to ensure that the content received in a successful PUT request
is consistent with that metadata. When a PUT representation is
inconsistent with the target resource, the origin server SHOULD
either make them consistent, by transforming the representation or
changing the resource configuration, or respond with an appropriate
error message containing sufficient information to explain why the
representation is unsuitable. The 409 (Conflict) or 415 (Unsupported
Media Type) status codes are suggested, with the latter being
specific to constraints on Content-Type values.
For example, if the target resource is configured to always have a
Content-Type of "text/html" and the representation being PUT has a
Content-Type of "image/jpeg", the origin server ought to do one of:
a. reconfigure the target resource to reflect the new media type;
b. transform the PUT representation to a format consistent with that
of the resource before saving it as the new resource state; or,
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c. reject the request with a 415 (Unsupported Media Type) response
indicating that the target resource is limited to "text/html",
perhaps including a link to a different resource that would be a
suitable target for the new representation.
HTTP does not define exactly how a PUT method affects the state of an
origin server beyond what can be expressed by the intent of the user
agent request and the semantics of the origin server response. It
does not define what a resource might be, in any sense of that word,
beyond the interface provided via HTTP. It does not define how
resource state is "stored", nor how such storage might change as a
result of a change in resource state, nor how the origin server
translates resource state into representations. Generally speaking,
all implementation details behind the resource interface are
intentionally hidden by the server.
This extends to how header and trailer fields are stored; while
common header fields like Content-Type will typically be stored and
returned upon subsequent GET requests, header and trailer field
handling is specific to the resource that received the request. As a
result, an origin server SHOULD ignore unrecognized header and
trailer fields received in a PUT request (i.e., not save them as part
of the resource state).
An origin server MUST NOT send a validator field (Section 8.8), such
as an ETag or Last-Modified field, in a successful response to PUT
unless the request's representation data was saved without any
transformation applied to the content (i.e., the resource's new
representation data is identical to the content received in the PUT
request) and the validator field value reflects the new
representation. This requirement allows a user agent to know when
the representation it sent (and retains in memory) is the result of
the PUT, and thus doesn't need to be retrieved again from the origin
server. The new validator(s) received in the response can be used
for future conditional requests in order to prevent accidental
overwrites (Section 13.1).
The fundamental difference between the POST and PUT methods is
highlighted by the different intent for the enclosed representation.
The target resource in a POST request is intended to handle the
enclosed representation according to the resource's own semantics,
whereas the enclosed representation in a PUT request is defined as
replacing the state of the target resource. Hence, the intent of PUT
is idempotent and visible to intermediaries, even though the exact
effect is only known by the origin server.
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Proper interpretation of a PUT request presumes that the user agent
knows which target resource is desired. A service that selects a
proper URI on behalf of the client, after receiving a state-changing
request, SHOULD be implemented using the POST method rather than PUT.
If the origin server will not make the requested PUT state change to
the target resource and instead wishes to have it applied to a
different resource, such as when the resource has been moved to a
different URI, then the origin server MUST send an appropriate 3xx
(Redirection) response; the user agent MAY then make its own decision
regarding whether or not to redirect the request.
A PUT request applied to the target resource can have side effects on
other resources. For example, an article might have a URI for
identifying "the current version" (a resource) that is separate from
the URIs identifying each particular version (different resources
that at one point shared the same state as the current version
resource). A successful PUT request on "the current version" URI
might therefore create a new version resource in addition to changing
the state of the target resource, and might also cause links to be
added between the related resources.
Some origin servers support use of the Content-Range header field
(Section 14.4) as a request modifier to perform a partial PUT, as
described in Section 14.5.
Responses to the PUT method are not cacheable. If a successful PUT
request passes through a cache that has one or more stored responses
for the target URI, those stored responses will be invalidated (see
Section 4.4 of [CACHING]).
9.3.5. DELETE
The DELETE method requests that the origin server remove the
association between the target resource and its current
functionality. In effect, this method is similar to the "rm" command
in UNIX: it expresses a deletion operation on the URI mapping of the
origin server rather than an expectation that the previously
associated information be deleted.
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If the target resource has one or more current representations, they
might or might not be destroyed by the origin server, and the
associated storage might or might not be reclaimed, depending
entirely on the nature of the resource and its implementation by the
origin server (which are beyond the scope of this specification).
Likewise, other implementation aspects of a resource might need to be
deactivated or archived as a result of a DELETE, such as database or
gateway connections. In general, it is assumed that the origin
server will only allow DELETE on resources for which it has a
prescribed mechanism for accomplishing the deletion.
Relatively few resources allow the DELETE method -- its primary use
is for remote authoring environments, where the user has some
direction regarding its effect. For example, a resource that was
previously created using a PUT request, or identified via the
Location header field after a 201 (Created) response to a POST
request, might allow a corresponding DELETE request to undo those
actions. Similarly, custom user agent implementations that implement
an authoring function, such as revision control clients using HTTP
for remote operations, might use DELETE based on an assumption that
the server's URI space has been crafted to correspond to a version
repository.
If a DELETE method is successfully applied, the origin server SHOULD
send
o a 202 (Accepted) status code if the action will likely succeed but
has not yet been enacted,
o a 204 (No Content) status code if the action has been enacted and
no further information is to be supplied, or
o a 200 (OK) status code if the action has been enacted and the
response message includes a representation describing the status.
Although request message framing is independent of the method used,
content received in a DELETE request has no generally defined
semantics, cannot alter the meaning or target of the request, and
might lead some implementations to reject the request and close the
connection because of its potential as a request smuggling attack
(Section 11.2 of [HTTP/1.1]). A client SHOULD NOT generate content
in a DELETE request unless it is made directly to an origin server
that has previously indicated, in or out of band, that such a request
has a purpose and will be adequately supported. An origin server
SHOULD NOT rely on private agreements to receive content, since
participants in HTTP communication are often unaware of
intermediaries along the request chain.
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Responses to the DELETE method are not cacheable. If a successful
DELETE request passes through a cache that has one or more stored
responses for the target URI, those stored responses will be
invalidated (see Section 4.4 of [CACHING]).
9.3.6. CONNECT
The CONNECT method requests that the recipient establish a tunnel to
the destination origin server identified by the request target and,
if successful, thereafter restrict its behavior to blind forwarding
of data, in both directions, until the tunnel is closed. Tunnels are
commonly used to create an end-to-end virtual connection, through one
or more proxies, which can then be secured using TLS (Transport Layer
Security, [TLS13]).
CONNECT uses a special form of request target, unique to this method,
consisting of only the host and port number of the tunnel
destination, separated by a colon. There is no default port; a
client MUST send the port number even if the CONNECT request is based
on a URI reference that contains an authority component with an
elided port (Section 4.1). For example,
CONNECT server.example.com:80 HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com
A server MUST reject a CONNECT request that targets an empty or
invalid port number, typically by responding with a 400 (Bad Request)
status code.
Because CONNECT changes the request/response nature of an HTTP
connection, specific HTTP versions might have different ways of
mapping its semantics into the protocol's wire format.
CONNECT is intended for use in requests to a proxy. The recipient
can establish a tunnel either by directly connecting to the server
identified by the request target or, if configured to use another
proxy, by forwarding the CONNECT request to the next inbound proxy.
An origin server MAY accept a CONNECT request, but most origin
servers do not implement CONNECT.
Any 2xx (Successful) response indicates that the sender (and all
inbound proxies) will switch to tunnel mode immediately after the
response header section; data received after that header section is
from the server identified by the request target. Any response other
than a successful response indicates that the tunnel has not yet been
formed.
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A tunnel is closed when a tunnel intermediary detects that either
side has closed its connection: the intermediary MUST attempt to send
any outstanding data that came from the closed side to the other
side, close both connections, and then discard any remaining data
left undelivered.
Proxy authentication might be used to establish the authority to
create a tunnel. For example,
CONNECT server.example.com:443 HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com:443
Proxy-Authorization: basic aGVsbG86d29ybGQ=
There are significant risks in establishing a tunnel to arbitrary
servers, particularly when the destination is a well-known or
reserved TCP port that is not intended for Web traffic. For example,
a CONNECT to "example.com:25" would suggest that the proxy connect to
the reserved port for SMTP traffic; if allowed, that could trick the
proxy into relaying spam email. Proxies that support CONNECT SHOULD
restrict its use to a limited set of known ports or a configurable
list of safe request targets.
A server MUST NOT send any Transfer-Encoding or Content-Length header
fields in a 2xx (Successful) response to CONNECT. A client MUST
ignore any Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header fields received
in a successful response to CONNECT.
A CONNECT request message does not have content. The interpretation
of data sent after the header section of the CONNECT request message
is specific to the version of HTTP in use.
Responses to the CONNECT method are not cacheable.
9.3.7. OPTIONS
The OPTIONS method requests information about the communication
options available for the target resource, at either the origin
server or an intervening intermediary. This method allows a client
to determine the options and/or requirements associated with a
resource, or the capabilities of a server, without implying a
resource action.
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An OPTIONS request with an asterisk ("*") as the request target
(Section 7.1) applies to the server in general rather than to a
specific resource. Since a server's communication options typically
depend on the resource, the "*" request is only useful as a "ping" or
"no-op" type of method; it does nothing beyond allowing the client to
test the capabilities of the server. For example, this can be used
to test a proxy for HTTP/1.1 conformance (or lack thereof).
If the request target is not an asterisk, the OPTIONS request applies
to the options that are available when communicating with the target
resource.
A server generating a successful response to OPTIONS SHOULD send any
header that might indicate optional features implemented by the
server and applicable to the target resource (e.g., Allow), including
potential extensions not defined by this specification. The response
content, if any, might also describe the communication options in a
machine or human-readable representation. A standard format for such
a representation is not defined by this specification, but might be
defined by future extensions to HTTP.
A client MAY send a Max-Forwards header field in an OPTIONS request
to target a specific recipient in the request chain (see
Section 7.6.2). A proxy MUST NOT generate a Max-Forwards header
field while forwarding a request unless that request was received
with a Max-Forwards field.
A client that generates an OPTIONS request containing content MUST
send a valid Content-Type header field describing the representation
media type. Note that this specification does not define any use for
such content.
Responses to the OPTIONS method are not cacheable.
9.3.8. TRACE
The TRACE method requests a remote, application-level loop-back of
the request message. The final recipient of the request SHOULD
reflect the message received, excluding some fields described below,
back to the client as the content of a 200 (OK) response. The
"message/http" (Section 10.1 of [HTTP/1.1]) format is one way to do
so. The final recipient is either the origin server or the first
server to receive a Max-Forwards value of zero (0) in the request
(Section 7.6.2).
A client MUST NOT generate fields in a TRACE request containing
sensitive data that might be disclosed by the response. For example,
it would be foolish for a user agent to send stored user credentials
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(Section 11) or cookies [COOKIE] in a TRACE request. The final
recipient of the request SHOULD exclude any request fields that are
likely to contain sensitive data when that recipient generates the
response content.
TRACE allows the client to see what is being received at the other
end of the request chain and use that data for testing or diagnostic
information. The value of the Via header field (Section 7.6.3) is of
particular interest, since it acts as a trace of the request chain.
Use of the Max-Forwards header field allows the client to limit the
length of the request chain, which is useful for testing a chain of
proxies forwarding messages in an infinite loop.
A client MUST NOT send content in a TRACE request.
Responses to the TRACE method are not cacheable.
10. Message Context
10.1. Request Context Fields
The request header fields below provide additional information about
the request context, including information about the user, user
agent, and resource behind the request.
10.1.1. Expect
The "Expect" header field in a request indicates a certain set of
behaviors (expectations) that need to be supported by the server in
order to properly handle this request.
Expect = #expectation
expectation = token [ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) parameters ]
The Expect field value is case-insensitive.
The only expectation defined by this specification is "100-continue"
(with no defined parameters).
A server that receives an Expect field value containing a member
other than 100-continue MAY respond with a 417 (Expectation Failed)
status code to indicate that the unexpected expectation cannot be
met.
A _100-continue_ expectation informs recipients that the client is
about to send (presumably large) content in this request and wishes
to receive a 100 (Continue) interim response if the method, target
URI, and header fields are not sufficient to cause an immediate
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success, redirect, or error response. This allows the client to wait
for an indication that it is worthwhile to send the content before
actually doing so, which can improve efficiency when the data is huge
or when the client anticipates that an error is likely (e.g., when
sending a state-changing method, for the first time, without
previously verified authentication credentials).
For example, a request that begins with
PUT /somewhere/fun HTTP/1.1
Host: origin.example.com
Content-Type: video/h264
Content-Length: 1234567890987
Expect: 100-continue
allows the origin server to immediately respond with an error
message, such as 401 (Unauthorized) or 405 (Method Not Allowed),
before the client starts filling the pipes with an unnecessary data
transfer.
Requirements for clients:
o A client MUST NOT generate a 100-continue expectation in a request
that does not include content.
o A client that will wait for a 100 (Continue) response before
sending the request content MUST send an Expect header field
containing a 100-continue expectation.
o A client that sends a 100-continue expectation is not required to
wait for any specific length of time; such a client MAY proceed to
send the content even if it has not yet received a response.
Furthermore, since 100 (Continue) responses cannot be sent through
an HTTP/1.0 intermediary, such a client SHOULD NOT wait for an
indefinite period before sending the content.
o A client that receives a 417 (Expectation Failed) status code in
response to a request containing a 100-continue expectation SHOULD
repeat that request without a 100-continue expectation, since the
417 response merely indicates that the response chain does not
support expectations (e.g., it passes through an HTTP/1.0 server).
Requirements for servers:
o A server that receives a 100-continue expectation in an HTTP/1.0
request MUST ignore that expectation.
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o A server MAY omit sending a 100 (Continue) response if it has
already received some or all of the content for the corresponding
request, or if the framing indicates that there is no content.
o A server that sends a 100 (Continue) response MUST ultimately send
a final status code, once it receives and processes the request
content, unless the connection is closed prematurely.
o A server that responds with a final status code before reading the
entire request content SHOULD indicate whether it intends to close
the connection (e.g., see Section 9.6 of [HTTP/1.1]) or continue
reading the request content.
An origin server MUST, upon receiving an HTTP/1.1 (or later) request
that has a method, target URI, and complete header section that
contains a 100-continue expectation and an indication that request
content will follow, either send an immediate response with a final
status code, if that status can be determined by examining just the
method, target URI, and header fields, or send an immediate 100
(Continue) response to encourage the client to send the request
content. The origin server MUST NOT wait for the content before
sending the 100 (Continue) response.
A proxy MUST, upon receiving an HTTP/1.1 (or later) request that has
a method, target URI, and complete header section that contains a
100-continue expectation and indicates a request content will follow,
either send an immediate response with a final status code, if that
status can be determined by examining just the method, target URI,
and header fields, or begin forwarding the request toward the origin
server by sending a corresponding request-line and header section to
the next inbound server. If the proxy believes (from configuration
or past interaction) that the next inbound server only supports
HTTP/1.0, the proxy MAY generate an immediate 100 (Continue) response
to encourage the client to begin sending the content.
10.1.2. From
The "From" header field contains an Internet email address for a
human user who controls the requesting user agent. The address ought
to be machine-usable, as defined by "mailbox" in Section 3.4 of
[RFC5322]:
From = mailbox
mailbox =
An example is:
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From: webmaster@example.org
The From header field is rarely sent by non-robotic user agents. A
user agent SHOULD NOT send a From header field without explicit
configuration by the user, since that might conflict with the user's
privacy interests or their site's security policy.
A robotic user agent SHOULD send a valid From header field so that
the person responsible for running the robot can be contacted if
problems occur on servers, such as if the robot is sending excessive,
unwanted, or invalid requests.
A server SHOULD NOT use the From header field for access control or
authentication, since its value is expected to be visible to anyone
receiving or observing the request and is often recorded within
logfiles and error reports without any expectation of privacy.
10.1.3. Referer
The "Referer" [sic] header field allows the user agent to specify a
URI reference for the resource from which the target URI was obtained
(i.e., the "referrer", though the field name is misspelled). A user
agent MUST NOT include the fragment and userinfo components of the
URI reference [URI], if any, when generating the Referer field value.
Referer = absolute-URI / partial-URI
The field value is either an absolute-URI or a partial-URI. In the
latter case (Section 4), the referenced URI is relative to the target
URI ([URI], Section 5).
The Referer header field allows servers to generate back-links to
other resources for simple analytics, logging, optimized caching,
etc. It also allows obsolete or mistyped links to be found for
maintenance. Some servers use the Referer header field as a means of
denying links from other sites (so-called "deep linking") or
restricting cross-site request forgery (CSRF), but not all requests
contain it.
Example:
Referer: http://www.example.org/hypertext/Overview.html
If the target URI was obtained from a source that does not have its
own URI (e.g., input from the user keyboard, or an entry within the
user's bookmarks/favorites), the user agent MUST either exclude the
Referer header field or send it with a value of "about:blank".
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The Referer header field value need not convey the full URI of the
referring resource; a user agent MAY truncate parts other than the
referring origin.
The Referer header field has the potential to reveal information
about the request context or browsing history of the user, which is a
privacy concern if the referring resource's identifier reveals
personal information (such as an account name) or a resource that is
supposed to be confidential (such as behind a firewall or internal to
a secured service). Most general-purpose user agents do not send the
Referer header field when the referring resource is a local "file" or
"data" URI. A user agent SHOULD NOT send a Referer header field if
the referring resource was accessed with a secure protocol and the
request target has an origin differing from that of the referring
resource, unless the referring resource explicitly allows Referer to
be sent. A user agent MUST NOT send a Referer header field in an
unsecured HTTP request if the referring resource was accessed with a
secure protocol. See Section 17.9 for additional security
considerations.
Some intermediaries have been known to indiscriminately remove
Referer header fields from outgoing requests. This has the
unfortunate side effect of interfering with protection against CSRF
attacks, which can be far more harmful to their users.
Intermediaries and user agent extensions that wish to limit
information disclosure in Referer ought to restrict their changes to
specific edits, such as replacing internal domain names with
pseudonyms or truncating the query and/or path components. An
intermediary SHOULD NOT modify or delete the Referer header field
when the field value shares the same scheme and host as the target
URI.
10.1.4. TE
The "TE" header field describes capabilities of the client with
regard to transfer encodings and trailer sections.
A TE field with a "trailers" member sent in a request indicates that
the client will not discard trailer fields, as described in
Section 6.5.
TE is also used within HTTP/1.1 to advise servers about what transfer
codings the client is able to accept in a response. As of
publication, only HTTP/1.1 uses transfer codings (see Section 7 of
[HTTP/1.1]).
The TE field value consists of a list of tokens, each allowing for
optional parameters (except for the special case "trailers").
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TE = #t-codings
t-codings = "trailers" / ( transfer-coding [ weight ] )
transfer-coding = token *( OWS ";" OWS transfer-parameter )
transfer-parameter = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )
A sender of TE MUST also send a "TE" connection option within the
Connection header field (Section 7.6.1) to inform intermediaries not
to forward this field.
10.1.5. Trailer
The "Trailer" header field provides a list of field names that the
sender anticipates sending as trailer fields within that message.
This allows a recipient to prepare for receipt of the indicated
metadata before it starts processing the content.
Trailer = #field-name
For example, a sender might indicate that a message integrity check
will be computed as the content is being streamed and provide the
final signature as a trailer field. This allows a recipient to
perform the same check on the fly as it receives the content.
Because the Trailer field is not removed by intermediaries, it can
also be used by downstream recipients to discover when a trailer
field has been removed from a message.
A sender that intends to generate one or more trailer fields in a
message SHOULD generate a Trailer header field in the header section
of that message to indicate which fields might be present in the
trailers.
10.1.6. User-Agent
The "User-Agent" header field contains information about the user
agent originating the request, which is often used by servers to help
identify the scope of reported interoperability problems, to work
around or tailor responses to avoid particular user agent
limitations, and for analytics regarding browser or operating system
use. A user agent SHOULD send a User-Agent header field in each
request unless specifically configured not to do so.
User-Agent = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )
The User-Agent field value consists of one or more product
identifiers, each followed by zero or more comments (Section 5.6.5),
which together identify the user agent software and its significant
subproducts. By convention, the product identifiers are listed in
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decreasing order of their significance for identifying the user agent
software. Each product identifier consists of a name and optional
version.
product = token ["/" product-version]
product-version = token
A sender SHOULD limit generated product identifiers to what is
necessary to identify the product; a sender MUST NOT generate
advertising or other nonessential information within the product
identifier. A sender SHOULD NOT generate information in
product-version that is not a version identifier (i.e., successive
versions of the same product name ought to differ only in the
product-version portion of the product identifier).
Example:
User-Agent: CERN-LineMode/2.15 libwww/2.17b3
A user agent SHOULD NOT generate a User-Agent header field containing
needlessly fine-grained detail and SHOULD limit the addition of
subproducts by third parties. Overly long and detailed User-Agent
field values increase request latency and the risk of a user being
identified against their wishes ("fingerprinting").
Likewise, implementations are encouraged not to use the product
tokens of other implementations in order to declare compatibility
with them, as this circumvents the purpose of the field. If a user
agent masquerades as a different user agent, recipients can assume
that the user intentionally desires to see responses tailored for
that identified user agent, even if they might not work as well for
the actual user agent being used.
10.2. Response Context Fields
The response header fields below provide additional information about
the response, beyond what is implied by the status code, including
information about the server, about the target resource, or about
related resources.
10.2.1. Allow
The "Allow" header field lists the set of methods advertised as
supported by the target resource. The purpose of this field is
strictly to inform the recipient of valid request methods associated
with the resource.
Allow = #method
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Example of use:
Allow: GET, HEAD, PUT
The actual set of allowed methods is defined by the origin server at
the time of each request. An origin server MUST generate an Allow
header field in a 405 (Method Not Allowed) response and MAY do so in
any other response. An empty Allow field value indicates that the
resource allows no methods, which might occur in a 405 response if
the resource has been temporarily disabled by configuration.
A proxy MUST NOT modify the Allow header field -- it does not need to
understand all of the indicated methods in order to handle them
according to the generic message handling rules.
10.2.2. Date
The "Date" header field represents the date and time at which the
message was originated, having the same semantics as the Origination
Date Field (orig-date) defined in Section 3.6.1 of [RFC5322]. The
field value is an HTTP-date, as defined in Section 5.6.7.
Date = HTTP-date
An example is
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 08:12:31 GMT
A sender that generates a Date header field SHOULD generate its field
value as the best available approximation of the date and time of
message generation. In theory, the date ought to represent the
moment just before generating the message content. In practice, a
sender can generate the date value at any time during message
origination.
An origin server MUST NOT send a Date header field if it does not
have a clock capable of providing a reasonable approximation of the
current instant in Coordinated Universal Time. An origin server MAY
send a Date header field if the response is in the 1xx
(Informational) or 5xx (Server Error) class of status codes. An
origin server MUST send a Date header field in all other cases.
A recipient with a clock that receives a response message without a
Date header field MUST record the time it was received and append a
corresponding Date header field to the message's header section if it
is cached or forwarded downstream.
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A recipient with a clock that receives a response with an invalid
Date header field value MAY replace that value with the time that
response was received.
A user agent MAY send a Date header field in a request, though
generally will not do so unless it is believed to convey useful
information to the server. For example, custom applications of HTTP
might convey a Date if the server is expected to adjust its
interpretation of the user's request based on differences between the
user agent and server clocks.
10.2.3. Location
The "Location" header field is used in some responses to refer to a
specific resource in relation to the response. The type of
relationship is defined by the combination of request method and
status code semantics.
Location = URI-reference
The field value consists of a single URI-reference. When it has the
form of a relative reference ([URI], Section 4.2), the final value is
computed by resolving it against the target URI ([URI], Section 5).
For 201 (Created) responses, the Location value refers to the primary
resource created by the request. For 3xx (Redirection) responses,
the Location value refers to the preferred target resource for
automatically redirecting the request.
If the Location value provided in a 3xx (Redirection) response does
not have a fragment component, a user agent MUST process the
redirection as if the value inherits the fragment component of the
URI reference used to generate the target URI (i.e., the redirection
inherits the original reference's fragment, if any).
For example, a GET request generated for the URI reference
"http://www.example.org/~tim" might result in a 303 (See Other)
response containing the header field:
Location: /People.html#tim
which suggests that the user agent redirect to
"http://www.example.org/People.html#tim"
Likewise, a GET request generated for the URI reference
"http://www.example.org/index.html#larry" might result in a 301
(Moved Permanently) response containing the header field:
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Location: http://www.example.net/index.html
which suggests that the user agent redirect to
"http://www.example.net/index.html#larry", preserving the original
fragment identifier.
There are circumstances in which a fragment identifier in a Location
value would not be appropriate. For example, the Location header
field in a 201 (Created) response is supposed to provide a URI that
is specific to the created resource.
| *Note:* Some recipients attempt to recover from Location header
| fields that are not valid URI references. This specification
| does not mandate or define such processing, but does allow it
| for the sake of robustness. A Location field value cannot
| allow a list of members because the comma list separator is a
| valid data character within a URI-reference. If an invalid
| message is sent with multiple Location field lines, a recipient
| along the path might combine those field lines into one value.
| Recovery of a valid Location field value from that situation is
| difficult and not interoperable across implementations.
| *Note:* The Content-Location header field (Section 8.7) differs
| from Location in that the Content-Location refers to the most
| specific resource corresponding to the enclosed representation.
| It is therefore possible for a response to contain both the
| Location and Content-Location header fields.
10.2.4. Retry-After
Servers send the "Retry-After" header field to indicate how long the
user agent ought to wait before making a follow-up request. When
sent with a 503 (Service Unavailable) response, Retry-After indicates
how long the service is expected to be unavailable to the client.
When sent with any 3xx (Redirection) response, Retry-After indicates
the minimum time that the user agent is asked to wait before issuing
the redirected request.
The Retry-After field value can be either an HTTP-date or a number of
seconds to delay after receiving the response.
Retry-After = HTTP-date / delay-seconds
A delay-seconds value is a non-negative decimal integer, representing
time in seconds.
delay-seconds = 1*DIGIT
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Two examples of its use are
Retry-After: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT
Retry-After: 120
In the latter example, the delay is 2 minutes.
10.2.5. Server
The "Server" header field contains information about the software
used by the origin server to handle the request, which is often used
by clients to help identify the scope of reported interoperability
problems, to work around or tailor requests to avoid particular
server limitations, and for analytics regarding server or operating
system use. An origin server MAY generate a Server header field in
its responses.
Server = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )
The Server header field value consists of one or more product
identifiers, each followed by zero or more comments (Section 5.6.5),
which together identify the origin server software and its
significant subproducts. By convention, the product identifiers are
listed in decreasing order of their significance for identifying the
origin server software. Each product identifier consists of a name
and optional version, as defined in Section 10.1.6.
Example:
Server: CERN/3.0 libwww/2.17
An origin server SHOULD NOT generate a Server header field containing
needlessly fine-grained detail and SHOULD limit the addition of
subproducts by third parties. Overly long and detailed Server field
values increase response latency and potentially reveal internal
implementation details that might make it (slightly) easier for
attackers to find and exploit known security holes.
11. HTTP Authentication
11.1. Authentication Scheme
HTTP provides a general framework for access control and
authentication, via an extensible set of challenge-response
authentication schemes, which can be used by a server to challenge a
client request and by a client to provide authentication information.
It uses a case-insensitive token to identify the authentication
scheme
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auth-scheme = token
Aside from the general framework, this document does not specify any
authentication schemes. New and existing authentication schemes are
specified independently and ought to be registered within the
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Authentication Scheme Registry".
For example, the "basic" and "digest" authentication schemes are
defined by RFC 7617 and RFC 7616, respectively.
11.2. Authentication Parameters
The authentication scheme is followed by additional information
necessary for achieving authentication via that scheme as either a
comma-separated list of parameters or a single sequence of characters
capable of holding base64-encoded information.
token68 = 1*( ALPHA / DIGIT /
"-" / "." / "_" / "~" / "+" / "/" ) *"="
The token68 syntax allows the 66 unreserved URI characters ([URI]),
plus a few others, so that it can hold a base64, base64url (URL and
filename safe alphabet), base32, or base16 (hex) encoding, with or
without padding, but excluding whitespace ([RFC4648]).
Authentication parameters are name=value pairs, where the name token
is matched case-insensitively and each parameter name MUST only occur
once per challenge.
auth-param = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )
Parameter values can be expressed either as "token" or as "quoted-
string" (Section 5.6). Authentication scheme definitions need to
accept both notations, both for senders and recipients, to allow
recipients to use generic parsing components regardless of the
authentication scheme.
For backwards compatibility, authentication scheme definitions can
restrict the format for senders to one of the two variants. This can
be important when it is known that deployed implementations will fail
when encountering one of the two formats.
11.3. Challenge and Response
A 401 (Unauthorized) response message is used by an origin server to
challenge the authorization of a user agent, including a
WWW-Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge
applicable to the requested resource.
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A 407 (Proxy Authentication Required) response message is used by a
proxy to challenge the authorization of a client, including a
Proxy-Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge
applicable to the proxy for the requested resource.
challenge = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / #auth-param ) ]
| *Note:* Many clients fail to parse a challenge that contains an
| unknown scheme. A workaround for this problem is to list well-
| supported schemes (such as "basic") first.
A user agent that wishes to authenticate itself with an origin server
-- usually, but not necessarily, after receiving a 401 (Unauthorized)
-- can do so by including an Authorization header field with the
request.
A client that wishes to authenticate itself with a proxy -- usually,
but not necessarily, after receiving a 407 (Proxy Authentication
Required) -- can do so by including a Proxy-Authorization header
field with the request.
11.4. Credentials
Both the Authorization field value and the Proxy-Authorization field
value contain the client's credentials for the realm of the resource
being requested, based upon a challenge received in a response
(possibly at some point in the past). When creating their values,
the user agent ought to do so by selecting the challenge with what it
considers to be the most secure auth-scheme that it understands,
obtaining credentials from the user as appropriate. Transmission of
credentials within header field values implies significant security
considerations regarding the confidentiality of the underlying
connection, as described in Section 17.16.1.
credentials = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / #auth-param ) ]
Upon receipt of a request for a protected resource that omits
credentials, contains invalid credentials (e.g., a bad password) or
partial credentials (e.g., when the authentication scheme requires
more than one round trip), an origin server SHOULD send a 401
(Unauthorized) response that contains a WWW-Authenticate header field
with at least one (possibly new) challenge applicable to the
requested resource.
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Likewise, upon receipt of a request that omits proxy credentials or
contains invalid or partial proxy credentials, a proxy that requires
authentication SHOULD generate a 407 (Proxy Authentication Required)
response that contains a Proxy-Authenticate header field with at
least one (possibly new) challenge applicable to the proxy.
A server that receives valid credentials that are not adequate to
gain access ought to respond with the 403 (Forbidden) status code
(Section 15.5.4).
HTTP does not restrict applications to this simple challenge-response
framework for access authentication. Additional mechanisms can be
used, such as authentication at the transport level or via message
encapsulation, and with additional header fields specifying
authentication information. However, such additional mechanisms are
not defined by this specification.
Note that various custom mechanisms for user authentication use the
Set-Cookie and Cookie header fields, defined in [COOKIE], for passing
tokens related to authentication.
11.5. Establishing a Protection Space (Realm)
The _realm_ authentication parameter is reserved for use by
authentication schemes that wish to indicate a scope of protection.
A _protection space_ is defined by the origin (see Section 4.3.1) of
the server being accessed, in combination with the realm value if
present. These realms allow the protected resources on a server to
be partitioned into a set of protection spaces, each with its own
authentication scheme and/or authorization database. The realm value
is a string, generally assigned by the origin server, that can have
additional semantics specific to the authentication scheme. Note
that a response can have multiple challenges with the same auth-
scheme but with different realms.
The protection space determines the domain over which credentials can
be automatically applied. If a prior request has been authorized,
the user agent MAY reuse the same credentials for all other requests
within that protection space for a period of time determined by the
authentication scheme, parameters, and/or user preferences (such as a
configurable inactivity timeout).
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The extent of a protection space, and therefore the requests to which
credentials might be automatically applied, is not necessarily known
to clients without additional information. An authentication scheme
might define parameters that describe the extent of a protection
space. Unless specifically allowed by the authentication scheme, a
single protection space cannot extend outside the scope of its
server.
For historical reasons, a sender MUST only generate the quoted-string
syntax. Recipients might have to support both token and quoted-
string syntax for maximum interoperability with existing clients that
have been accepting both notations for a long time.
11.6. Authenticating Users to Origin Servers
11.6.1. WWW-Authenticate
The "WWW-Authenticate" response header field indicates the
authentication scheme(s) and parameters applicable to the target
resource.
WWW-Authenticate = #challenge
A server generating a 401 (Unauthorized) response MUST send a WWW-
Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge. A
server MAY generate a WWW-Authenticate header field in other response
messages to indicate that supplying credentials (or different
credentials) might affect the response.
A proxy forwarding a response MUST NOT modify any WWW-Authenticate
header fields in that response.
User agents are advised to take special care in parsing the field
value, as it might contain more than one challenge, and each
challenge can contain a comma-separated list of authentication
parameters. Furthermore, the header field itself can occur multiple
times.
For instance:
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="simple", Newauth realm="apps",
type=1, title="Login to \"apps\""
This header field contains two challenges; one for the "Basic" scheme
with a realm value of "simple", and another for the "Newauth" scheme
with a realm value of "apps", and two additional parameters "type"
and "title".
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Some user agents do not recognise this form, however. As a result,
sending a WWW-Authenticate field value with more than one member on
the same field line might not be interoperable.
| *Note:* The challenge grammar production uses the list syntax
| as well. Therefore, a sequence of comma, whitespace, and comma
| can be considered either as applying to the preceding
| challenge, or to be an empty entry in the list of challenges.
| In practice, this ambiguity does not affect the semantics of
| the header field value and thus is harmless.
11.6.2. Authorization
The "Authorization" header field allows a user agent to authenticate
itself with an origin server -- usually, but not necessarily, after
receiving a 401 (Unauthorized) response. Its value consists of
credentials containing the authentication information of the user
agent for the realm of the resource being requested.
Authorization = credentials
If a request is authenticated and a realm specified, the same
credentials are presumed to be valid for all other requests within
this realm (assuming that the authentication scheme itself does not
require otherwise, such as credentials that vary according to a
challenge value or using synchronized clocks).
A proxy forwarding a request MUST NOT modify any Authorization header
fields in that request. See Section 3.5 of [CACHING] for details of
and requirements pertaining to handling of the Authorization header
field by HTTP caches.
11.6.3. Authentication-Info
HTTP authentication schemes can use the Authentication-Info response
field to communicate information after the client's authentication
credentials have been accepted. This information can include a
finalization message from the server (e.g., it can contain the server
authentication).
The field value is a list of parameters (name/value pairs), using the
"auth-param" syntax defined in Section 11.3. This specification only
describes the generic format; authentication schemes using
Authentication-Info will define the individual parameters. The
"Digest" Authentication Scheme, for instance, defines multiple
parameters in Section 3.5 of [RFC7616].
Authentication-Info = #auth-param
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The Authentication-Info field can be used in any HTTP response,
independently of request method and status code. Its semantics are
defined by the authentication scheme indicated by the Authorization
header field (Section 11.6.2) of the corresponding request.
A proxy forwarding a response is not allowed to modify the field
value in any way.
Authentication-Info can be sent as a trailer field (Section 6.5) when
the authentication scheme explicitly allows this.
11.7. Authenticating Clients to Proxies
11.7.1. Proxy-Authenticate
The "Proxy-Authenticate" header field consists of at least one
challenge that indicates the authentication scheme(s) and parameters
applicable to the proxy for this request. A proxy MUST send at least
one Proxy-Authenticate header field in each 407 (Proxy Authentication
Required) response that it generates.
Proxy-Authenticate = #challenge
Unlike WWW-Authenticate, the Proxy-Authenticate header field applies
only to the next outbound client on the response chain. This is
because only the client that chose a given proxy is likely to have
the credentials necessary for authentication. However, when multiple
proxies are used within the same administrative domain, such as
office and regional caching proxies within a large corporate network,
it is common for credentials to be generated by the user agent and
passed through the hierarchy until consumed. Hence, in such a
configuration, it will appear as if Proxy-Authenticate is being
forwarded because each proxy will send the same challenge set.
Note that the parsing considerations for WWW-Authenticate apply to
this header field as well; see Section 11.6.1 for details.
11.7.2. Proxy-Authorization
The "Proxy-Authorization" header field allows the client to identify
itself (or its user) to a proxy that requires authentication. Its
value consists of credentials containing the authentication
information of the client for the proxy and/or realm of the resource
being requested.
Proxy-Authorization = credentials
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Unlike Authorization, the Proxy-Authorization header field applies
only to the next inbound proxy that demanded authentication using the
Proxy-Authenticate header field. When multiple proxies are used in a
chain, the Proxy-Authorization header field is consumed by the first
inbound proxy that was expecting to receive credentials. A proxy MAY
relay the credentials from the client request to the next proxy if
that is the mechanism by which the proxies cooperatively authenticate
a given request.
11.7.3. Proxy-Authentication-Info
The Proxy-Authentication-Info response header field is equivalent to
Authentication-Info, except that it applies to proxy authentication
(Section 11.3) and its semantics are defined by the authentication
scheme indicated by the Proxy-Authorization header field
(Section 11.7.2) of the corresponding request:
Proxy-Authentication-Info = #auth-param
However, unlike Authentication-Info, the Proxy-Authentication-Info
header field applies only to the next outbound client on the response
chain. This is because only the client that chose a given proxy is
likely to have the credentials necessary for authentication.
However, when multiple proxies are used within the same
administrative domain, such as office and regional caching proxies
within a large corporate network, it is common for credentials to be
generated by the user agent and passed through the hierarchy until
consumed. Hence, in such a configuration, it will appear as if
Proxy-Authentication-Info is being forwarded because each proxy will
send the same field value.
12. Content Negotiation
When responses convey content, whether indicating a success or an
error, the origin server often has different ways of representing
that information; for example, in different formats, languages, or
encodings. Likewise, different users or user agents might have
differing capabilities, characteristics, or preferences that could
influence which representation, among those available, would be best
to deliver. For this reason, HTTP provides mechanisms for content
negotiation.
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This specification defines three patterns of content negotiation that
can be made visible within the protocol: "proactive" negotiation,
where the server selects the representation based upon the user
agent's stated preferences, "reactive" negotiation, where the server
provides a list of representations for the user agent to choose from,
and "request content" negotiation, where the user agent selects the
representation for a future request based upon the server's stated
preferences in past responses.
Other patterns of content negotiation include "conditional content",
where the representation consists of multiple parts that are
selectively rendered based on user agent parameters, "active
content", where the representation contains a script that makes
additional (more specific) requests based on the user agent
characteristics, and "Transparent Content Negotiation" ([RFC2295]),
where content selection is performed by an intermediary. These
patterns are not mutually exclusive, and each has trade-offs in
applicability and practicality.
Note that, in all cases, HTTP is not aware of the resource semantics.
The consistency with which an origin server responds to requests,
over time and over the varying dimensions of content negotiation, and
thus the "sameness" of a resource's observed representations over
time, is determined entirely by whatever entity or algorithm selects
or generates those responses.
12.1. Proactive Negotiation
When content negotiation preferences are sent by the user agent in a
request to encourage an algorithm located at the server to select the
preferred representation, it is called _proactive negotiation_
(a.k.a., _server-driven negotiation_). Selection is based on the
available representations for a response (the dimensions over which
it might vary, such as language, content coding, etc.) compared to
various information supplied in the request, including both the
explicit negotiation header fields below and implicit
characteristics, such as the client's network address or parts of the
User-Agent field.
Proactive negotiation is advantageous when the algorithm for
selecting from among the available representations is difficult to
describe to a user agent, or when the server desires to send its
"best guess" to the user agent along with the first response (when
that "best guess" is good enough for the user, this avoids the round
trip delay of a subsequent request). In order to improve the
server's guess, a user agent MAY send request header fields that
describe its preferences.
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Proactive negotiation has serious disadvantages:
o It is impossible for the server to accurately determine what might
be "best" for any given user, since that would require complete
knowledge of both the capabilities of the user agent and the
intended use for the response (e.g., does the user want to view it
on screen or print it on paper?);
o Having the user agent describe its capabilities in every request
can be both very inefficient (given that only a small percentage
of responses have multiple representations) and a potential risk
to the user's privacy;
o It complicates the implementation of an origin server and the
algorithms for generating responses to a request; and,
o It limits the reusability of responses for shared caching.
A user agent cannot rely on proactive negotiation preferences being
consistently honored, since the origin server might not implement
proactive negotiation for the requested resource or might decide that
sending a response that doesn't conform to the user agent's
preferences is better than sending a 406 (Not Acceptable) response.
A Vary header field (Section 12.5.5) is often sent in a response
subject to proactive negotiation to indicate what parts of the
request information were used in the selection algorithm.
The request header fields Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Encoding,
and Accept-Language are defined below for a user agent to engage in
proactive negotiation of the response content. The preferences sent
in these fields apply to any content in the response, including
representations of the target resource, representations of error or
processing status, and potentially even the miscellaneous text
strings that might appear within the protocol.
12.2. Reactive Negotiation
With _reactive negotiation_ (a.k.a., _agent-driven negotiation_),
selection of content (regardless of the status code) is performed by
the user agent after receiving an initial response. The mechanism
for reactive negotiation might be as simple as a list of references
to alternative representations.
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If the user agent is not satisfied by the initial response content,
it can perform a GET request on one or more of the alternative
resources to obtain a different representation. Selection of such
alternatives might be performed automatically (by the user agent) or
manually (e.g., by the user selecting from a hypertext menu).
A server might choose not to send an initial representation, other
than the list of alternatives, and thereby indicate that reactive
negotiation by the user agent is preferred. For example, the
alternatives listed in responses with the 300 (Multiple Choices) and
406 (Not Acceptable) status codes include information about available
representations so that the user or user agent can react by making a
selection.
Reactive negotiation is advantageous when the response would vary
over commonly used dimensions (such as type, language, or encoding),
when the origin server is unable to determine a user agent's
capabilities from examining the request, and generally when public
caches are used to distribute server load and reduce network usage.
Reactive negotiation suffers from the disadvantages of transmitting a
list of alternatives to the user agent, which degrades user-perceived
latency if transmitted in the header section, and needing a second
request to obtain an alternate representation. Furthermore, this
specification does not define a mechanism for supporting automatic
selection, though it does not prevent such a mechanism from being
developed as an extension.
12.3. Request Content Negotiation
When content negotiation preferences are sent in a server's response,
the listed preferences are called _request content negotiation_
because they intend to influence selection of an appropriate content
for subsequent requests to that resource. For example, the Accept
(Section 12.5.1) and Accept-Encoding (Section 12.5.3) header fields
can be sent in a response to indicate preferred media types and
content codings for subsequent requests to that resource.
Similarly, Section 3.1 of [RFC5789] defines the "Accept-Patch"
response header field which allows discovery of which content types
are accepted in PATCH requests.
12.4. Content Negotiation Field Features
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12.4.1. Absence
For each of the content negotiation fields, a request that does not
contain the field implies that the sender has no preference on that
dimension of negotiation.
If a content negotiation header field is present in a request and
none of the available representations for the response can be
considered acceptable according to it, the origin server can either
honor the header field by sending a 406 (Not Acceptable) response or
disregard the header field by treating the response as if it is not
subject to content negotiation for that request header field. This
does not imply, however, that the client will be able to use the
representation.
| *Note:* A user agent sending these header fields makes it
| easier for a server to identify an individual by virtue of the
| user agent's request characteristics (Section 17.13).
12.4.2. Quality Values
The content negotiation fields defined by this specification use a
common parameter, named "q" (case-insensitive), to assign a relative
"weight" to the preference for that associated kind of content. This
weight is referred to as a "quality value" (or "qvalue") because the
same parameter name is often used within server configurations to
assign a weight to the relative quality of the various
representations that can be selected for a resource.
The weight is normalized to a real number in the range 0 through 1,
where 0.001 is the least preferred and 1 is the most preferred; a
value of 0 means "not acceptable". If no "q" parameter is present,
the default weight is 1.
weight = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue
qvalue = ( "0" [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] )
/ ( "1" [ "." 0*3("0") ] )
A sender of qvalue MUST NOT generate more than three digits after the
decimal point. User configuration of these values ought to be
limited in the same fashion.
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12.4.3. Wildcard Values
Most of these header fields, where indicated, define a wildcard value
("*") to select unspecified values. If no wildcard is present,
values that are not explicitly mentioned in the field are considered
unacceptable. Within Vary, the wildcard value means that the
variance is unlimited.
| *Note:* In practice, using wildcards in content negotiation has
| limited practical value, because it is seldom useful to say,
| for example, "I prefer image/* more or less than (some other
| specific value)". Clients can explicitly request a 406 (Not
| Acceptable) response if a more preferred format is not
| available by sending Accept: */*;q=0, but they still need to be
| able to handle a different response, since the server is
| allowed to ignore their preference.
12.5. Content Negotiation Fields
12.5.1. Accept
The "Accept" header field can be used by user agents to specify their
preferences regarding response media types. For example, Accept
header fields can be used to indicate that the request is
specifically limited to a small set of desired types, as in the case
of a request for an in-line image.
When sent by a server in a response, Accept provides information
about what content types are preferred in the content of a subsequent
request to the same resource.
Accept = #( media-range [ weight ] )
media-range = ( "*/*"
/ ( type "/" "*" )
/ ( type "/" subtype )
) parameters
The asterisk "*" character is used to group media types into ranges,
with "*/*" indicating all media types and "type/*" indicating all
subtypes of that type. The media-range can include media type
parameters that are applicable to that range.
Each media-range might be followed by optional applicable media type
parameters (e.g., charset), followed by an optional "q" parameter for
indicating a relative weight (Section 12.4.2).
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Previous specifications allowed additional extension parameters to
appear after the weight parameter. The accept extension grammar
(accept-params, accept-ext) has been removed because it had a
complicated definition, was not being used in practice, and is more
easily deployed through new header fields. Senders using weights
SHOULD send "q" last (after all media-range parameters). Recipients
SHOULD process any parameter named "q" as weight, regardless of
parameter ordering.
| *Note:* Use of the "q" parameter name to control content
| negotiation is due to historical practice. Although this
| prevents any media type parameter named "q" from being used
| with a media range, such an event is believed to be unlikely
| given the lack of any "q" parameters in the IANA media type
| registry and the rare usage of any media type parameters in
| Accept. Future media types are discouraged from registering
| any parameter named "q".
The example
Accept: audio/*; q=0.2, audio/basic
is interpreted as "I prefer audio/basic, but send me any audio type
if it is the best available after an 80% markdown in quality".
A more elaborate example is
Accept: text/plain; q=0.5, text/html,
text/x-dvi; q=0.8, text/x-c
Verbally, this would be interpreted as "text/html and text/x-c are
the equally preferred media types, but if they do not exist, then
send the text/x-dvi representation, and if that does not exist, send
the text/plain representation".
Media ranges can be overridden by more specific media ranges or
specific media types. If more than one media range applies to a
given type, the most specific reference has precedence. For example,
Accept: text/*, text/plain, text/plain;format=flowed, */*
have the following precedence:
1. text/plain;format=flowed
2. text/plain
3. text/*
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4. */*
The media type quality factor associated with a given type is
determined by finding the media range with the highest precedence
that matches the type. For example,
Accept: text/*;q=0.3, text/plain;q=0.7, text/plain;format=flowed,
text/plain;format=fixed;q=0.4, */*;q=0.5
would cause the following values to be associated:
+--------------------------+---------------+
| Media Type | Quality Value |
+--------------------------+---------------+
| text/plain;format=flowed | 1 |
| text/plain | 0.7 |
| text/html | 0.3 |
| image/jpeg | 0.5 |
| text/plain;format=fixed | 0.4 |
| text/html;level=3 | 0.7 |
+--------------------------+---------------+
Table 5
| *Note:* A user agent might be provided with a default set of
| quality values for certain media ranges. However, unless the
| user agent is a closed system that cannot interact with other
| rendering agents, this default set ought to be configurable by
| the user.
12.5.2. Accept-Charset
The "Accept-Charset" header field can be sent by a user agent to
indicate its preferences for charsets in textual response content.
For example, this field allows user agents capable of understanding
more comprehensive or special-purpose charsets to signal that
capability to an origin server that is capable of representing
information in those charsets.
Accept-Charset = #( ( token / "*" ) [ weight ] )
Charset names are defined in Section 8.3.2. A user agent MAY
associate a quality value with each charset to indicate the user's
relative preference for that charset, as defined in Section 12.4.2.
An example is
Accept-Charset: iso-8859-5, unicode-1-1;q=0.8
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The special value "*", if present in the Accept-Charset header field,
matches every charset that is not mentioned elsewhere in the field.
| *Note:* Accept-Charset is deprecated because UTF-8 has become
| nearly ubiquitous and sending a detailed list of user-preferred
| charsets wastes bandwidth, increases latency, and makes passive
| fingerprinting far too easy (Section 17.13). Most general-
| purpose user agents do not send Accept-Charset, unless
| specifically configured to do so.
12.5.3. Accept-Encoding
The "Accept-Encoding" header field can be used to indicate
preferences regarding the use of content codings (Section 8.4.1).
When sent by a user agent in a request, Accept-Encoding indicates the
content codings acceptable in a response.
When sent by a server in a response, Accept-Encoding provides
information about what content codings are preferred in the content
of a subsequent request to the same resource.
An "identity" token is used as a synonym for "no encoding" in order
to communicate when no encoding is preferred.
Accept-Encoding = #( codings [ weight ] )
codings = content-coding / "identity" / "*"
Each codings value MAY be given an associated quality value
representing the preference for that encoding, as defined in
Section 12.4.2. The asterisk "*" symbol in an Accept-Encoding field
matches any available content coding not explicitly listed in the
field.
For example,
Accept-Encoding: compress, gzip
Accept-Encoding:
Accept-Encoding: *
Accept-Encoding: compress;q=0.5, gzip;q=1.0
Accept-Encoding: gzip;q=1.0, identity; q=0.5, *;q=0
A server tests whether a content coding for a given representation is
acceptable using these rules:
1. If no Accept-Encoding header field is in the request, any content
coding is considered acceptable by the user agent.
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2. If the representation has no content coding, then it is
acceptable by default unless specifically excluded by the Accept-
Encoding header field stating either "identity;q=0" or "*;q=0"
without a more specific entry for "identity".
3. If the representation's content coding is one of the content
codings listed in the Accept-Encoding field value, then it is
acceptable unless it is accompanied by a qvalue of 0. (As
defined in Section 12.4.2, a qvalue of 0 means "not acceptable".)
A representation could be encoded with multiple content codings.
However, most content codings are alternative ways to accomplish the
same purpose (e.g., data compression). When selecting between
multiple content codings that have the same purpose, the acceptable
content coding with the highest non-zero qvalue is preferred.
An Accept-Encoding header field with a field value that is empty
implies that the user agent does not want any content coding in
response. If an Accept-Encoding header field is present in a request
and none of the available representations for the response have a
content coding that is listed as acceptable, the origin server SHOULD
send a response without any content coding.
When the Accept-Encoding header field is present in a response, it
indicates what content codings the resource was willing to accept in
the associated request. The field value is evaluated the same way as
in a request.
Note that this information is specific to the associated request; the
set of supported encodings might be different for other resources on
the same server and could change over time or depend on other aspects
of the request (such as the request method).
Servers that fail a request due to an unsupported content coding
ought to respond with a 415 (Unsupported Media Type) status and
include an Accept-Encoding header field in that response, allowing
clients to distinguish between issues related to content codings and
media types. In order to avoid confusion with issues related to
media types, servers that fail a request with a 415 status for
reasons unrelated to content codings MUST NOT include the Accept-
Encoding header field.
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The most common use of Accept-Encoding is in responses with a 415
(Unsupported Media Type) status code, in response to optimistic use
of a content coding by clients. However, the header field can also
be used to indicate to clients that content codings are supported, to
optimize future interactions. For example, a resource might include
it in a 2xx (Successful) response when the request content was big
enough to justify use of a compression coding but the client failed
do so.
| *Note:* Most HTTP/1.0 applications do not recognize or obey
| qvalues associated with content-codings. This means that
| qvalues might not work and are not permitted with x-gzip or
| x-compress.
12.5.4. Accept-Language
The "Accept-Language" header field can be used by user agents to
indicate the set of natural languages that are preferred in the
response. Language tags are defined in Section 8.5.1.
Accept-Language = #( language-range [ weight ] )
language-range =
Each language-range can be given an associated quality value
representing an estimate of the user's preference for the languages
specified by that range, as defined in Section 12.4.2. For example,
Accept-Language: da, en-gb;q=0.8, en;q=0.7
would mean: "I prefer Danish, but will accept British English and
other types of English".
Note that some recipients treat the order in which language tags are
listed as an indication of descending priority, particularly for tags
that are assigned equal quality values (no value is the same as q=1).
However, this behavior cannot be relied upon. For consistency and to
maximize interoperability, many user agents assign each language tag
a unique quality value while also listing them in order of decreasing
quality. Additional discussion of language priority lists can be
found in Section 2.3 of [RFC4647].
For matching, Section 3 of [RFC4647] defines several matching
schemes. Implementations can offer the most appropriate matching
scheme for their requirements. The "Basic Filtering" scheme
([RFC4647], Section 3.3.1) is identical to the matching scheme that
was previously defined for HTTP in Section 14.4 of [RFC2616].
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It might be contrary to the privacy expectations of the user to send
an Accept-Language header field with the complete linguistic
preferences of the user in every request (Section 17.13).
Since intelligibility is highly dependent on the individual user,
user agents need to allow user control over the linguistic preference
(either through configuration of the user agent itself or by
defaulting to a user controllable system setting). A user agent that
does not provide such control to the user MUST NOT send an Accept-
Language header field.
| *Note:* User agents ought to provide guidance to users when
| setting a preference, since users are rarely familiar with the
| details of language matching as described above. For example,
| users might assume that on selecting "en-gb", they will be
| served any kind of English document if British English is not
| available. A user agent might suggest, in such a case, to add
| "en" to the list for better matching behavior.
12.5.5. Vary
The "Vary" header field in a response describes what parts of a
request message, aside from the method and target URI, might
influence the origin server's process for selecting and representing
this response.
Vary = #( "*" / field-name )
A Vary field value is a list of request field names, known as the
selecting header fields, that might have a role in selecting the
representation for this response. Potential selecting header fields
are not limited to those defined by this specification.
If the list contains "*", it signals that other aspects of the
request might play a role in selecting the response representation,
possibly including elements outside the message syntax (e.g., the
client's network address). A recipient will not be able to determine
whether this response is appropriate for a later request without
forwarding the request to the origin server. A proxy MUST NOT
generate "*" in a Vary field value.
For example, a response that contains
Vary: accept-encoding, accept-language
indicates that the origin server might have used the request's
Accept-Encoding and Accept-Language header fields (or lack thereof)
as determining factors while choosing the content for this response.
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An origin server might send Vary with a list of header fields for two
purposes:
1. To inform cache recipients that they MUST NOT use this response
to satisfy a later request unless the later request has the same
values for the listed header fields as the original request
(Section 4.1 of [CACHING]). In other words, Vary expands the
cache key required to match a new request to the stored cache
entry.
2. To inform user agent recipients that this response is subject to
content negotiation (Section 12) and that a different
representation might be sent in a subsequent request if
additional parameters are provided in the listed header fields
(proactive negotiation).
An origin server SHOULD send a Vary header field when its algorithm
for selecting a representation varies based on aspects of the request
message other than the method and target URI, unless the variance
cannot be crossed or the origin server has been deliberately
configured to prevent cache transparency. For example, there is no
need to send the Authorization field name in Vary because reuse
across users is constrained by the field definition (Section 11.6.2).
Likewise, an origin server might use Cache-Control response
directives (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]) to supplant Vary if it
considers the variance less significant than the performance cost of
Vary's impact on caching.
13. Conditional Requests
A conditional request is an HTTP request with one or more request
header fields that indicate a precondition to be tested before
applying the request method to the target resource. Section 13.2
defines when to evaluate preconditions and their order of precedence
when more than one precondition is present.
Conditional GET requests are the most efficient mechanism for HTTP
cache updates [CACHING]. Conditionals can also be applied to state-
changing methods, such as PUT and DELETE, to prevent the "lost
update" problem: one client accidentally overwriting the work of
another client that has been acting in parallel.
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13.1. Preconditions
Preconditions are usually defined with respect to a state of the
target resource as a whole (its current value set) or the state as
observed in a previously obtained representation (one value in that
set). If a resource has multiple current representations, each with
its own observable state, a precondition will assume that the mapping
of each request to a selected representation (Section 3.2) is
consistent over time. Regardless, if the mapping is inconsistent or
the server is unable to select an appropriate representation, then no
harm will result when the precondition evaluates to false.
Each precondition defined below consists of a comparison between a
set of validators obtained from prior representations of the target
resource to the current state of validators for the selected
representation (Section 8.8). Hence, these preconditions evaluate
whether the state of the target resource has changed since a given
state known by the client. The effect of such an evaluation depends
on the method semantics and choice of conditional, as defined in
Section 13.2.
Other preconditions, defined by other specifications as extension
fields, might place conditions on all recipients, on the state of the
target resource in general, or on a group of resources. For
instance, the "If" header field in WebDAV can make a request
conditional on various aspects of multiple resources, such as locks,
if the recipient understands and implements that field ([WEBDAV],
Section 10.4).
Extensibility of preconditions is only possible when the precondition
can be safely ignored if unknown (like If-Modified-Since), when
deployment can be assumed for a given use case, or when
implementation is signaled by some other property of the target
resource. This encourages a focus on mutually agreed deployment of
common standards.
13.1.1. If-Match
The "If-Match" header field makes the request method conditional on
the recipient origin server either having at least one current
representation of the target resource, when the field value is "*",
or having a current representation of the target resource that has an
entity-tag matching a member of the list of entity-tags provided in
the field value.
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An origin server MUST use the strong comparison function when
comparing entity-tags for If-Match (Section 8.8.3.2), since the
client intends this precondition to prevent the method from being
applied if there have been any changes to the representation data.
If-Match = "*" / #entity-tag
Examples:
If-Match: "xyzzy"
If-Match: "xyzzy", "r2d2xxxx", "c3piozzzz"
If-Match: *
If-Match is most often used with state-changing methods (e.g., POST,
PUT, DELETE) to prevent accidental overwrites when multiple user
agents might be acting in parallel on the same resource (i.e., to
prevent the "lost update" problem). It can also be used with any
method to abort a request if the selected representation does not
match one that the client has already stored (or partially stored)
from a prior request.
An origin server that receives an If-Match header field MUST evaluate
the condition as per Section 13.2 prior to performing the method.
To evaluate a received If-Match header field:
1. If the field value is "*", the condition is true if the origin
server has a current representation for the target resource.
2. If the field value is a list of entity-tags, the condition is
true if any of the listed tags match the entity-tag of the
selected representation.
3. Otherwise, the condition is false.
An origin server MUST NOT perform the requested method if a received
If-Match condition evaluates to false. Instead, the origin server
MAY indicate that the conditional request failed by responding with a
412 (Precondition Failed) status code. Alternatively, if the request
is a state-changing operation that appears to have already been
applied to the selected representation, the origin server MAY respond
with a 2xx (Successful) status code (i.e., the change requested by
the user agent has already succeeded, but the user agent might not be
aware of it, perhaps because the prior response was lost or an
equivalent change was made by some other user agent).
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Allowing an origin server to send a success response when a change
request appears to have already been applied is more efficient for
many authoring use cases, but comes with some risk if multiple user
agents are making change requests that are very similar but not
cooperative. For example, multiple user agents writing to a common
resource as a semaphore (e.g., a non-atomic increment) are likely to
collide and potentially lose important state transitions. For those
kinds of resources, an origin server is better off being stringent in
sending 412 for every failed precondition on an unsafe method. In
other cases, excluding the ETag field from a success response might
encourage the user agent to perform a GET as its next request to
eliminate confusion about the resource's current state.
The If-Match header field can be ignored by caches and intermediaries
because it is not applicable to a stored response.
Note that an If-Match header field with a list value containing "*"
and other values (including other instances of "*") is syntactically
invalid (therefore not allowed to be generated) and furthermore is
unlikely to be interoperable.
13.1.2. If-None-Match
The "If-None-Match" header field makes the request method conditional
on a recipient cache or origin server either not having any current
representation of the target resource, when the field value is "*",
or having a selected representation with an entity-tag that does not
match any of those listed in the field value.
A recipient MUST use the weak comparison function when comparing
entity-tags for If-None-Match (Section 8.8.3.2), since weak entity-
tags can be used for cache validation even if there have been changes
to the representation data.
If-None-Match = "*" / #entity-tag
Examples:
If-None-Match: "xyzzy"
If-None-Match: W/"xyzzy"
If-None-Match: "xyzzy", "r2d2xxxx", "c3piozzzz"
If-None-Match: W/"xyzzy", W/"r2d2xxxx", W/"c3piozzzz"
If-None-Match: *
If-None-Match is primarily used in conditional GET requests to enable
efficient updates of cached information with a minimum amount of
transaction overhead. When a client desires to update one or more
stored responses that have entity-tags, the client SHOULD generate an
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If-None-Match header field containing a list of those entity-tags
when making a GET request; this allows recipient servers to send a
304 (Not Modified) response to indicate when one of those stored
responses matches the selected representation.
If-None-Match can also be used with a value of "*" to prevent an
unsafe request method (e.g., PUT) from inadvertently modifying an
existing representation of the target resource when the client
believes that the resource does not have a current representation
(Section 9.2.1). This is a variation on the "lost update" problem
that might arise if more than one client attempts to create an
initial representation for the target resource.
An origin server that receives an If-None-Match header field MUST
evaluate the condition as per Section 13.2 prior to performing the
method.
To evaluate a received If-None-Match header field:
1. If the field value is "*", the condition is false if the origin
server has a current representation for the target resource.
2. If the field value is a list of entity-tags, the condition is
false if one of the listed tags matches the entity-tag of the
selected representation.
3. Otherwise, the condition is true.
An origin server MUST NOT perform the requested method if a received
If-None-Match condition evaluates to false; instead, the origin
server MUST respond with either a) the 304 (Not Modified) status code
if the request method is GET or HEAD or b) the 412 (Precondition
Failed) status code for all other request methods.
Requirements on cache handling of a received If-None-Match header
field are defined in Section 4.3.2 of [CACHING].
Note that an If-None-Match header field with a list value containing
"*" and other values (including other instances of "*") is
syntactically invalid (therefore not allowed to be generated) and
furthermore is unlikely to be interoperable.
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13.1.3. If-Modified-Since
The "If-Modified-Since" header field makes a GET or HEAD request
method conditional on the selected representation's modification date
being more recent than the date provided in the field value.
Transfer of the selected representation's data is avoided if that
data has not changed.
If-Modified-Since = HTTP-date
An example of the field is:
If-Modified-Since: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 19:43:31 GMT
A recipient MUST ignore If-Modified-Since if the request contains an
If-None-Match header field; the condition in If-None-Match is
considered to be a more accurate replacement for the condition in If-
Modified-Since, and the two are only combined for the sake of
interoperating with older intermediaries that might not implement
If-None-Match.
A recipient MUST ignore the If-Modified-Since header field if the
received field value is not a valid HTTP-date, the field value has
more than one member, or if the request method is neither GET nor
HEAD.
A recipient MUST interpret an If-Modified-Since field value's
timestamp in terms of the origin server's clock.
If-Modified-Since is typically used for two distinct purposes: 1) to
allow efficient updates of a cached representation that does not have
an entity-tag and 2) to limit the scope of a web traversal to
resources that have recently changed.
When used for cache updates, a cache will typically use the value of
the cached message's Last-Modified header field to generate the field
value of If-Modified-Since. This behavior is most interoperable for
cases where clocks are poorly synchronized or when the server has
chosen to only honor exact timestamp matches (due to a problem with
Last-Modified dates that appear to go "back in time" when the origin
server's clock is corrected or a representation is restored from an
archived backup). However, caches occasionally generate the field
value based on other data, such as the Date header field of the
cached message or the local clock time that the message was received,
particularly when the cached message does not contain a Last-Modified
header field.
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When used for limiting the scope of retrieval to a recent time
window, a user agent will generate an If-Modified-Since field value
based on either its own local clock or a Date header field received
from the server in a prior response. Origin servers that choose an
exact timestamp match based on the selected representation's
Last-Modified header field will not be able to help the user agent
limit its data transfers to only those changed during the specified
window.
An origin server that receives an If-Modified-Since header field
SHOULD evaluate the condition as per Section 13.2 prior to performing
the method.
To evaluate a received If-Modified-Since header field:
1. If the selected representation's last modification date is
earlier or equal to the date provided in the field value, the
condition is false.
2. Otherwise, the condition is true.
An origin server SHOULD NOT perform the requested method if a
received If-Modified-Since condition evaluates to false; instead, the
origin server SHOULD generate a 304 (Not Modified) response,
including only those metadata that are useful for identifying or
updating a previously cached response.
Requirements on cache handling of a received If-Modified-Since header
field are defined in Section 4.3.2 of [CACHING].
13.1.4. If-Unmodified-Since
The "If-Unmodified-Since" header field makes the request method
conditional on the selected representation's last modification date
being earlier than or equal to the date provided in the field value.
This field accomplishes the same purpose as If-Match for cases where
the user agent does not have an entity-tag for the representation.
If-Unmodified-Since = HTTP-date
An example of the field is:
If-Unmodified-Since: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 19:43:31 GMT
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A recipient MUST ignore If-Unmodified-Since if the request contains
an If-Match header field; the condition in If-Match is considered to
be a more accurate replacement for the condition in If-Unmodified-
Since, and the two are only combined for the sake of interoperating
with older intermediaries that might not implement If-Match.
A recipient MUST ignore the If-Unmodified-Since header field if the
received field value is not a valid HTTP-date (including when the
field value appears to be a list of dates).
A recipient MUST interpret an If-Unmodified-Since field value's
timestamp in terms of the origin server's clock.
If-Unmodified-Since is most often used with state-changing methods
(e.g., POST, PUT, DELETE) to prevent accidental overwrites when
multiple user agents might be acting in parallel on a resource that
does not supply entity-tags with its representations (i.e., to
prevent the "lost update" problem). It can also be used with any
method to abort a request if the selected representation does not
match one that the client already stored (or partially stored) from a
prior request.
An origin server that receives an If-Unmodified-Since header field
without an If-Match header field MUST evaluate the condition as per
Section 13.2 prior to performing the method.
To evaluate a received If-Unmodified-Since header field:
1. If the selected representation's last modification date is
earlier than or equal to the date provided in the field value,
the condition is true.
2. Otherwise, the condition is false.
An origin server MUST NOT perform the requested method if an If-
Unmodified-Since condition evaluates to false. Instead, the origin
server MAY indicate that the conditional request failed by responding
with a 412 (Precondition Failed) status code. Alternatively, if the
request is a state-changing operation that appears to have already
been applied to the selected representation, the origin server MAY
respond with a 2xx (Successful) status code (i.e., the change
requested by the user agent has already succeeded, but the user agent
might not be aware of it, perhaps because the prior response was lost
or an equivalent change was made by some other user agent).
Allowing an origin server to send a success response when a change
request appears to have already been applied is more efficient for
many authoring use cases, but comes with some risk if multiple user
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agents are making change requests that are very similar but not
cooperative. In those cases, an origin server is better off being
stringent in sending 412 for every failed precondition on an unsafe
method.
The If-Unmodified-Since header field can be ignored by caches and
intermediaries because it is not applicable to a stored response.
13.1.5. If-Range
The "If-Range" header field provides a special conditional request
mechanism that is similar to the If-Match and If-Unmodified-Since
header fields but that instructs the recipient to ignore the Range
header field if the validator doesn't match, resulting in transfer of
the new selected representation instead of a 412 (Precondition
Failed) response.
If a client has a partial copy of a representation and wishes to have
an up-to-date copy of the entire representation, it could use the
Range header field with a conditional GET (using either or both of
If-Unmodified-Since and If-Match.) However, if the precondition
fails because the representation has been modified, the client would
then have to make a second request to obtain the entire current
representation.
The "If-Range" header field allows a client to "short-circuit" the
second request. Informally, its meaning is as follows: if the
representation is unchanged, send me the part(s) that I am requesting
in Range; otherwise, send me the entire representation.
If-Range = entity-tag / HTTP-date
A valid entity-tag can be distinguished from a valid HTTP-date by
examining the first three characters for a DQUOTE.
A client MUST NOT generate an If-Range header field in a request that
does not contain a Range header field. A server MUST ignore an If-
Range header field received in a request that does not contain a
Range header field. An origin server MUST ignore an If-Range header
field received in a request for a target resource that does not
support Range requests.
A client MUST NOT generate an If-Range header field containing an
entity-tag that is marked as weak. A client MUST NOT generate an If-
Range header field containing an HTTP-date unless the client has no
entity-tag for the corresponding representation and the date is a
strong validator in the sense defined by Section 8.8.2.2.
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A server that receives an If-Range header field on a Range request
MUST evaluate the condition as per Section 13.2 prior to performing
the method.
To evaluate a received If-Range header field containing an HTTP-date:
1. If the HTTP-date validator provided is not a strong validator in
the sense defined by Section 8.8.2.2, the condition is false.
2. If the HTTP-date validator provided exactly matches the
Last-Modified field value for the selected representation, the
condition is true.
3. Otherwise, the condition is false.
To evaluate a received If-Range header field containing an
entity-tag:
1. If the entity-tag validator provided exactly matches the ETag
field value for the selected representation using the strong
comparison function (Section 8.8.3.2), the condition is true.
2. Otherwise, the condition is false.
A recipient of an If-Range header field MUST ignore the Range header
field if the If-Range condition evaluates to false. Otherwise, the
recipient SHOULD process the Range header field as requested.
Note that the If-Range comparison is by exact match, including when
the validator is an HTTP-date, and so differs from the "earlier than
or equal to" comparison used when evaluating an If-Unmodified-Since
conditional.
13.2. Evaluation of Preconditions
13.2.1. When to Evaluate
Except when excluded below, a recipient cache or origin server MUST
evaluate received request preconditions after it has successfully
performed its normal request checks and just before it would process
the request content (if any) or perform the action associated with
the request method. A server MUST ignore all received preconditions
if its response to the same request without those conditions, prior
to processing the request content, would have been a status code
other than a 2xx (Successful) or 412 (Precondition Failed). In other
words, redirects and failures that can be detected before significant
processing occurs take precedence over the evaluation of
preconditions.
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A server that is not the origin server for the target resource and
cannot act as a cache for requests on the target resource MUST NOT
evaluate the conditional request header fields defined by this
specification, and it MUST forward them if the request is forwarded,
since the generating client intends that they be evaluated by a
server that can provide a current representation. Likewise, a server
MUST ignore the conditional request header fields defined by this
specification when received with a request method that does not
involve the selection or modification of a selected representation,
such as CONNECT, OPTIONS, or TRACE.
Note that protocol extensions can modify the conditions under which
preconditions are evaluated or the consequences of their evaluation.
For example, the "immutable" cache directive (defined by [RFC8246])
instructs caches to forgo forwarding conditional requests when they
hold a fresh response.
Although conditional request header fields are defined as being
usable with the HEAD method (to keep HEAD's semantics consistent with
those of GET), there is no point in sending a conditional HEAD
because a successful response is around the same size as a 304 (Not
Modified) response and more useful than a 412 (Precondition Failed)
response.
13.2.2. Precedence of Preconditions
When more than one conditional request header field is present in a
request, the order in which the fields are evaluated becomes
important. In practice, the fields defined in this document are
consistently implemented in a single, logical order, since "lost
update" preconditions have more strict requirements than cache
validation, a validated cache is more efficient than a partial
response, and entity tags are presumed to be more accurate than date
validators.
A recipient cache or origin server MUST evaluate the request
preconditions defined by this specification in the following order:
1. When recipient is the origin server and If-Match is present,
evaluate the If-Match precondition:
o if true, continue to step 3
o if false, respond 412 (Precondition Failed) unless it can be
determined that the state-changing request has already
succeeded (see Section 13.1.1)
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2. When recipient is the origin server, If-Match is not present, and
If-Unmodified-Since is present, evaluate the If-Unmodified-Since
precondition:
o if true, continue to step 3
o if false, respond 412 (Precondition Failed) unless it can be
determined that the state-changing request has already
succeeded (see Section 13.1.4)
3. When If-None-Match is present, evaluate the If-None-Match
precondition:
o if true, continue to step 5
o if false for GET/HEAD, respond 304 (Not Modified)
o if false for other methods, respond 412 (Precondition Failed)
4. When the method is GET or HEAD, If-None-Match is not present, and
If-Modified-Since is present, evaluate the If-Modified-Since
precondition:
o if true, continue to step 5
o if false, respond 304 (Not Modified)
5. When the method is GET and both Range and If-Range are present,
evaluate the If-Range precondition:
o if the validator matches and the Range specification is
applicable to the selected representation, respond 206
(Partial Content)
6. Otherwise,
o all conditions are met, so perform the requested action and
respond according to its success or failure.
Any extension to HTTP that defines additional conditional request
header fields ought to define the order for evaluating such fields in
relation to those defined in this document and other conditionals
that might be found in practice.
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14. Range Requests
Clients often encounter interrupted data transfers as a result of
canceled requests or dropped connections. When a client has stored a
partial representation, it is desirable to request the remainder of
that representation in a subsequent request rather than transfer the
entire representation. Likewise, devices with limited local storage
might benefit from being able to request only a subset of a larger
representation, such as a single page of a very large document, or
the dimensions of an embedded image.
Range requests are an OPTIONAL feature of HTTP, designed so that
recipients not implementing this feature (or not supporting it for
the target resource) can respond as if it is a normal GET request
without impacting interoperability. Partial responses are indicated
by a distinct status code to not be mistaken for full responses by
caches that might not implement the feature.
14.1. Range Units
Representation data can be partitioned into subranges when there are
addressable structural units inherent to that data's content coding
or media type. For example, octet (a.k.a., byte) boundaries are a
structural unit common to all representation data, allowing
partitions of the data to be identified as a range of bytes at some
offset from the start or end of that data.
This general notion of a _range unit_ is used in the Accept-Ranges
(Section 14.3) response header field to advertise support for range
requests, the Range (Section 14.2) request header field to delineate
the parts of a representation that are requested, and the
Content-Range (Section 14.4) header field to describe which part of a
representation is being transferred.
range-unit = token
All range unit names are case-insensitive and ought to be registered
within the "HTTP Range Unit Registry", as defined in Section 16.5.1.
Range units are intended to be extensible, as described in
Section 16.5.
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14.1.1. Range Specifiers
Ranges are expressed in terms of a range unit paired with a set of
range specifiers. The range unit name determines what kinds of
range-spec are applicable to its own specifiers. Hence, the
following grammar is generic: each range unit is expected to specify
requirements on when int-range, suffix-range, and other-range are
allowed.
A range request can specify a single range or a set of ranges within
a single representation.
ranges-specifier = range-unit "=" range-set
range-set = 1#range-spec
range-spec = int-range
/ suffix-range
/ other-range
An int-range is a range expressed as two non-negative integers or as
one non-negative integer through to the end of the representation
data. The range unit specifies what the integers mean (e.g., they
might indicate unit offsets from the beginning, inclusive numbered
parts, etc.).
int-range = first-pos "-" [ last-pos ]
first-pos = 1*DIGIT
last-pos = 1*DIGIT
An int-range is invalid if the last-pos value is present and less
than the first-pos.
A suffix-range is a range expressed as a suffix of the representation
data with the provided non-negative integer maximum length (in range
units). In other words, the last N units of the representation data.
suffix-range = "-" suffix-length
suffix-length = 1*DIGIT
To provide for extensibility, the other-range rule is a mostly
unconstrained grammar that allows application-specific or future
range units to define additional range specifiers.
other-range = 1*( %x21-2B / %x2D-7E )
; 1*(VCHAR excluding comma)
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14.1.2. Byte Ranges
The "bytes" range unit is used to express subranges of a
representation data's octet sequence. Each byte range is expressed
as an integer range at some offset, relative to either the beginning
(int-range) or end (suffix-range) of the representation data. Byte
ranges do not use the other-range specifier.
The first-pos value in a bytes int-range gives the offset of the
first byte in a range. The last-pos value gives the offset of the
last byte in the range; that is, the byte positions specified are
inclusive. Byte offsets start at zero.
If the representation data has a content coding applied, each byte
range is calculated with respect to the encoded sequence of bytes,
not the sequence of underlying bytes that would be obtained after
decoding.
Examples of bytes range specifiers:
o The first 500 bytes (byte offsets 0-499, inclusive):
bytes=0-499
o The second 500 bytes (byte offsets 500-999, inclusive):
bytes=500-999
A client can limit the number of bytes requested without knowing the
size of the selected representation. If the last-pos value is
absent, or if the value is greater than or equal to the current
length of the representation data, the byte range is interpreted as
the remainder of the representation (i.e., the server replaces the
value of last-pos with a value that is one less than the current
length of the selected representation).
A client can request the last N bytes (N > 0) of the selected
representation using a suffix-range. If the selected representation
is shorter than the specified suffix-length, the entire
representation is used.
Additional examples, assuming a representation of length 10000:
o The final 500 bytes (byte offsets 9500-9999, inclusive):
bytes=-500
Or:
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bytes=9500-
o The first and last bytes only (bytes 0 and 9999):
bytes=0-0,-1
o The first, middle, and last 1000 bytes:
bytes= 0-999, 4500-5499, -1000
o Other valid (but not canonical) specifications of the second 500
bytes (byte offsets 500-999, inclusive):
bytes=500-600,601-999
bytes=500-700,601-999
If a valid bytes range-set includes at least one range-spec with a
first-pos that is less than the current length of the representation,
or at least one suffix-range with a non-zero suffix-length, then the
bytes range-set is satisfiable. Otherwise, the bytes range-set is
unsatisfiable.
If the selected representation has zero length, the only satisfiable
form of range-spec is a suffix-range with a non-zero suffix-length.
In the byte-range syntax, first-pos, last-pos, and suffix-length are
expressed as decimal number of octets. Since there is no predefined
limit to the length of content, recipients MUST anticipate
potentially large decimal numerals and prevent parsing errors due to
integer conversion overflows.
14.2. Range
The "Range" header field on a GET request modifies the method
semantics to request transfer of only one or more subranges of the
selected representation data (Section 8.1), rather than the entire
selected representation.
Range = ranges-specifier
A server MAY ignore the Range header field. However, origin servers
and intermediate caches ought to support byte ranges when possible,
since they support efficient recovery from partially failed transfers
and partial retrieval of large representations.
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A server MUST ignore a Range header field received with a request
method which is unrecognized or for which range handling is not
defined. For this specification, GET is the only method for which
range handling is defined.
An origin server MUST ignore a Range header field that contains a
range unit it does not understand. A proxy MAY discard a Range
header field that contains a range unit it does not understand.
A server that supports range requests MAY ignore or reject a Range
header field that consists of more than two overlapping ranges, or a
set of many small ranges that are not listed in ascending order,
since both are indications of either a broken client or a deliberate
denial-of-service attack (Section 17.15). A client SHOULD NOT
request multiple ranges that are inherently less efficient to process
and transfer than a single range that encompasses the same data.
A server that supports range requests MAY ignore a Range header field
when the selected representation has no content (i.e., the selected
representation's data is of zero length).
A client that is requesting multiple ranges SHOULD list those ranges
in ascending order (the order in which they would typically be
received in a complete representation) unless there is a specific
need to request a later part earlier. For example, a user agent
processing a large representation with an internal catalog of parts
might need to request later parts first, particularly if the
representation consists of pages stored in reverse order and the user
agent wishes to transfer one page at a time.
The Range header field is evaluated after evaluating the precondition
header fields defined in Section 13.1, and only if the result in
absence of the Range header field would be a 200 (OK) response. In
other words, Range is ignored when a conditional GET would result in
a 304 (Not Modified) response.
The If-Range header field (Section 13.1.5) can be used as a
precondition to applying the Range header field.
If all of the preconditions are true, the server supports the Range
header field for the target resource, and the specified range(s) are
valid and satisfiable (as defined in Section 14.1.2), the server
SHOULD send a 206 (Partial Content) response with a content
containing one or more partial representations that correspond to the
satisfiable ranges requested.
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The above does not imply that a server will send all requested
ranges. In some cases, it may only be possible (or efficient) to
send a portion of the requested ranges first, while expecting the
client to re-request the remaining portions later if they are still
desired (see Section 15.3.7).
If all of the preconditions are true, the server supports the Range
header field for the target resource, and the specified range(s) are
invalid or unsatisfiable, the server SHOULD send a 416 (Range Not
Satisfiable) response.
14.3. Accept-Ranges
The "Accept-Ranges" field in a response indicates whether an upstream
server supports range requests for the target resource.
Accept-Ranges = acceptable-ranges
acceptable-ranges = 1#range-unit
For example, a server that supports byte-range requests
(Section 14.1.2) can send the field
Accept-Ranges: bytes
to indicate that it supports byte range requests for that target
resource, thereby encouraging its use by the client for future
partial requests on the same request path. Range units are defined
in Section 14.1.
A client MAY generate range requests regardless of having received an
Accept-Ranges field. The information only provides advice for the
sake of improving performance and reducing unnecessary network
transfers.
Conversely, a client MUST NOT assume that receiving an Accept-Ranges
field means that future range requests will return partial responses.
The content might change, the server might only support range
requests at certain times or under certain conditions, or a different
intermediary might process the next request.
A server that does not support any kind of range request for the
target resource MAY send
Accept-Ranges: none
to advise the client not to attempt a range request on the same
request path. The range unit "none" is reserved for this purpose.
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The Accept-Ranges field MAY be sent in a trailer section, but is
preferred to be sent as a header field because the information is
particularly useful for restarting large information transfers that
have failed in mid-content (before the trailer section is received).
14.4. Content-Range
The "Content-Range" header field is sent in a single part 206
(Partial Content) response to indicate the partial range of the
selected representation enclosed as the message content, sent in each
part of a multipart 206 response to indicate the range enclosed
within each body part, and sent in 416 (Range Not Satisfiable)
responses to provide information about the selected representation.
Content-Range = range-unit SP
( range-resp / unsatisfied-range )
range-resp = incl-range "/" ( complete-length / "*" )
incl-range = first-pos "-" last-pos
unsatisfied-range = "*/" complete-length
complete-length = 1*DIGIT
If a 206 (Partial Content) response contains a Content-Range header
field with a range unit (Section 14.1) that the recipient does not
understand, the recipient MUST NOT attempt to recombine it with a
stored representation. A proxy that receives such a message SHOULD
forward it downstream.
Content-Range might also be sent as a request modifier to request a
partial PUT, as described in Section 14.5, based on private
agreements between client and origin server. A server MUST ignore a
Content-Range header field received in a request with a method for
which Content-Range support is not defined.
For byte ranges, a sender SHOULD indicate the complete length of the
representation from which the range has been extracted, unless the
complete length is unknown or difficult to determine. An asterisk
character ("*") in place of the complete-length indicates that the
representation length was unknown when the header field was
generated.
The following example illustrates when the complete length of the
selected representation is known by the sender to be 1234 bytes:
Content-Range: bytes 42-1233/1234
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and this second example illustrates when the complete length is
unknown:
Content-Range: bytes 42-1233/*
A Content-Range field value is invalid if it contains a range-resp
that has a last-pos value less than its first-pos value, or a
complete-length value less than or equal to its last-pos value. The
recipient of an invalid Content-Range MUST NOT attempt to recombine
the received content with a stored representation.
A server generating a 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) response to a byte-
range request SHOULD send a Content-Range header field with an
unsatisfied-range value, as in the following example:
Content-Range: bytes */1234
The complete-length in a 416 response indicates the current length of
the selected representation.
The Content-Range header field has no meaning for status codes that
do not explicitly describe its semantic. For this specification,
only the 206 (Partial Content) and 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) status
codes describe a meaning for Content-Range.
The following are examples of Content-Range values in which the
selected representation contains a total of 1234 bytes:
o The first 500 bytes:
Content-Range: bytes 0-499/1234
o The second 500 bytes:
Content-Range: bytes 500-999/1234
o All except for the first 500 bytes:
Content-Range: bytes 500-1233/1234
o The last 500 bytes:
Content-Range: bytes 734-1233/1234
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14.5. Partial PUT
Some origin servers support PUT of a partial representation when the
user agent sends a Content-Range header field (Section 14.4) in the
request, though such support is inconsistent and depends on private
agreements with user agents. In general, it requests that the state
of the target resource be partly replaced with the enclosed content
at an offset and length indicated by the Content-Range value, where
the offset is relative to the current selected representation.
An origin server SHOULD respond with a 400 (Bad Request) status code
if it receives Content-Range on a PUT for a target resource that does
not support partial PUT requests.
Partial PUT is not backwards compatible with the original definition
of PUT. It may result in the content being written as a complete
replacement for the current representation.
Partial resource updates are also possible by targeting a separately
identified resource with state that overlaps or extends a portion of
the larger resource, or by using a different method that has been
specifically defined for partial updates (for example, the PATCH
method defined in [RFC5789]).
14.6. Media Type multipart/byteranges
When a 206 (Partial Content) response message includes the content of
multiple ranges, they are transmitted as body parts in a multipart
message body ([RFC2046], Section 5.1) with the media type of
"multipart/byteranges".
The multipart/byteranges media type includes one or more body parts,
each with its own Content-Type and Content-Range fields. The
required boundary parameter specifies the boundary string used to
separate each body part.
Implementation Notes:
1. Additional CRLFs might precede the first boundary string in the
body.
2. Although [RFC2046] permits the boundary string to be quoted, some
existing implementations handle a quoted boundary string
incorrectly.
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3. A number of clients and servers were coded to an early draft of
the byteranges specification that used a media type of multipart/
x-byteranges , which is almost (but not quite) compatible with
this type.
Despite the name, the "multipart/byteranges" media type is not
limited to byte ranges. The following example uses an "exampleunit"
range unit:
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 14 July 04:58:08 GMT
Content-Length: 2331785
Content-Type: multipart/byteranges; boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: video/example
Content-Range: exampleunit 1.2-4.3/25
...the first range...
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: video/example
Content-Range: exampleunit 11.2-14.3/25
...the second range
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES--
The following information serves as the registration form for the
multipart/byteranges media type.
Type name: multipart
Subtype name: byteranges
Required parameters: boundary
Optional parameters: N/A
Encoding considerations: only "7bit", "8bit", or "binary" are
permitted
Security considerations: see Section 17
Interoperability considerations: N/A
Published specification: This specification (see Section 14.6).
Applications that use this media type: HTTP components supporting
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multiple ranges in a single request.
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Additional information: Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
Magic number(s): N/A
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: See Aut
hors' Addresses section.
Intended usage: COMMON
Restrictions on usage: N/A
Author: See Authors' Addresses section.
Change controller: IESG
15. Status Codes
The status code of a response is a three-digit integer code that
describes the result of the request and the semantics of the
response, including whether the request was successful and what
content is enclosed (if any). All valid status codes are within the
range of 100 to 599, inclusive.
The first digit of the status code defines the class of response.
The last two digits do not have any categorization role. There are
five values for the first digit:
o 1xx (Informational): The request was received, continuing process
o 2xx (Successful): The request was successfully received,
understood, and accepted
o 3xx (Redirection): Further action needs to be taken in order to
complete the request
o 4xx (Client Error): The request contains bad syntax or cannot be
fulfilled
o 5xx (Server Error): The server failed to fulfill an apparently
valid request
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HTTP status codes are extensible. A client is not required to
understand the meaning of all registered status codes, though such
understanding is obviously desirable. However, a client MUST
understand the class of any status code, as indicated by the first
digit, and treat an unrecognized status code as being equivalent to
the x00 status code of that class.
For example, if a client receives an unrecognized status code of 471,
it can see from the first digit that there was something wrong with
its request and treat the response as if it had received a 400 (Bad
Request) status code. The response message will usually contain a
representation that explains the status.
Values outside the range 100..599 are invalid. Implementations often
use three-digit integer values outside of that range (i.e., 600..999)
for internal communication of non-HTTP status (e.g., library errors).
A client that receives a response with an invalid status code SHOULD
process the response as if it had a 5xx (Server Error) status code.
A single request can have multiple associated responses: zero or more
_interim_ (non-final) responses with status codes in the
"informational" (1xx) range, followed by exactly one _final_ response
with a status code in one of the other ranges.
15.1. Overview of Status Codes
The status codes listed below are defined in this specification. The
reason phrases listed here are only recommendations -- they can be
replaced by local equivalents or left out altogether without
affecting the protocol.
Responses with status codes that are defined as heuristically
cacheable (e.g., 200, 203, 204, 206, 300, 301, 308, 404, 405, 410,
414, and 501 in this specification) can be reused by a cache with
heuristic expiration unless otherwise indicated by the method
definition or explicit cache controls [CACHING]; all other status
codes are not heuristically cacheable.
Additional status codes, outside the scope of this specification,
have been specified for use in HTTP. All such status codes ought to
be registered within the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status
Code Registry", as described in Section 16.2.
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15.2. Informational 1xx
The _1xx (Informational)_ class of status code indicates an interim
response for communicating connection status or request progress
prior to completing the requested action and sending a final
response. Since HTTP/1.0 did not define any 1xx status codes, a
server MUST NOT send a 1xx response to an HTTP/1.0 client.
A 1xx response is terminated by the end of the header section; it
cannot contain content or trailers.
A client MUST be able to parse one or more 1xx responses received
prior to a final response, even if the client does not expect one. A
user agent MAY ignore unexpected 1xx responses.
A proxy MUST forward 1xx responses unless the proxy itself requested
the generation of the 1xx response. For example, if a proxy adds an
"Expect: 100-continue" header field when it forwards a request, then
it need not forward the corresponding 100 (Continue) response(s).
15.2.1. 100 Continue
The _100 (Continue)_ status code indicates that the initial part of a
request has been received and has not yet been rejected by the
server. The server intends to send a final response after the
request has been fully received and acted upon.
When the request contains an Expect header field that includes a
100-continue expectation, the 100 response indicates that the server
wishes to receive the request content, as described in
Section 10.1.1. The client ought to continue sending the request and
discard the 100 response.
If the request did not contain an Expect header field containing the
100-continue expectation, the client can simply discard this interim
response.
15.2.2. 101 Switching Protocols
The _101 (Switching Protocols)_ status code indicates that the server
understands and is willing to comply with the client's request, via
the Upgrade header field (Section 7.8), for a change in the
application protocol being used on this connection. The server MUST
generate an Upgrade header field in the response that indicates which
protocol(s) will be in effect after this response.
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It is assumed that the server will only agree to switch protocols
when it is advantageous to do so. For example, switching to a newer
version of HTTP might be advantageous over older versions, and
switching to a real-time, synchronous protocol might be advantageous
when delivering resources that use such features.
15.3. Successful 2xx
The _2xx (Successful)_ class of status code indicates that the
client's request was successfully received, understood, and accepted.
15.3.1. 200 OK
The _200 (OK)_ status code indicates that the request has succeeded.
The content sent in a 200 response depends on the request method.
For the methods defined by this specification, the intended meaning
of the content can be summarized as:
+----------------+--------------------------------------------+
| request method | response content is a representation of |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------+
| GET | the target resource |
| HEAD | the target resource, like GET, but without |
| | transferring the representation data |
| POST | the status of, or results obtained from, |
| | the action |
| PUT, DELETE | the status of the action |
| OPTIONS | communication options for the target |
| | resource |
| TRACE | the request message as received by the |
| | server returning the trace |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------+
Table 6
Aside from responses to CONNECT, a 200 response is expected to
contain message content unless the message framing explicitly
indicates that the content has zero length. If some aspect of the
request indicates a preference for no content upon success, the
origin server ought to send a _204 (No Content)_ response instead.
For CONNECT, there is no content because the successful result is a
tunnel, which begins immediately after the 200 response header
section.
A 200 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
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15.3.2. 201 Created
The _201 (Created)_ status code indicates that the request has been
fulfilled and has resulted in one or more new resources being
created. The primary resource created by the request is identified
by either a Location header field in the response or, if no Location
header field is received, by the target URI.
The 201 response content typically describes and links to the
resource(s) created. See Section 8.8 for a discussion of the meaning
and purpose of validator fields, such as ETag and Last-Modified, in a
201 response.
15.3.3. 202 Accepted
The _202 (Accepted)_ status code indicates that the request has been
accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed.
The request might or might not eventually be acted upon, as it might
be disallowed when processing actually takes place. There is no
facility in HTTP for re-sending a status code from an asynchronous
operation.
The 202 response is intentionally noncommittal. Its purpose is to
allow a server to accept a request for some other process (perhaps a
batch-oriented process that is only run once per day) without
requiring that the user agent's connection to the server persist
until the process is completed. The representation sent with this
response ought to describe the request's current status and point to
(or embed) a status monitor that can provide the user with an
estimate of when the request will be fulfilled.
15.3.4. 203 Non-Authoritative Information
The _203 (Non-Authoritative Information)_ status code indicates that
the request was successful but the enclosed content has been modified
from that of the origin server's 200 (OK) response by a transforming
proxy (Section 7.7). This status code allows the proxy to notify
recipients when a transformation has been applied, since that
knowledge might impact later decisions regarding the content. For
example, future cache validation requests for the content might only
be applicable along the same request path (through the same proxies).
A 203 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
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15.3.5. 204 No Content
The _204 (No Content)_ status code indicates that the server has
successfully fulfilled the request and that there is no additional
content to send in the response content. Metadata in the response
header fields refer to the target resource and its selected
representation after the requested action was applied.
For example, if a 204 status code is received in response to a PUT
request and the response contains an ETag field, then the PUT was
successful and the ETag field value contains the entity-tag for the
new representation of that target resource.
The 204 response allows a server to indicate that the action has been
successfully applied to the target resource, while implying that the
user agent does not need to traverse away from its current "document
view" (if any). The server assumes that the user agent will provide
some indication of the success to its user, in accord with its own
interface, and apply any new or updated metadata in the response to
its active representation.
For example, a 204 status code is commonly used with document editing
interfaces corresponding to a "save" action, such that the document
being saved remains available to the user for editing. It is also
frequently used with interfaces that expect automated data transfers
to be prevalent, such as within distributed version control systems.
A 204 response is terminated by the end of the header section; it
cannot contain content or trailers.
A 204 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
15.3.6. 205 Reset Content
The _205 (Reset Content)_ status code indicates that the server has
fulfilled the request and desires that the user agent reset the
"document view", which caused the request to be sent, to its original
state as received from the origin server.
This response is intended to support a common data entry use case
where the user receives content that supports data entry (a form,
notepad, canvas, etc.), enters or manipulates data in that space,
causes the entered data to be submitted in a request, and then the
data entry mechanism is reset for the next entry so that the user can
easily initiate another input action.
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Since the 205 status code implies that no additional content will be
provided, a server MUST NOT generate content in a 205 response.
15.3.7. 206 Partial Content
The _206 (Partial Content)_ status code indicates that the server is
successfully fulfilling a range request for the target resource by
transferring one or more parts of the selected representation.
A server that supports range requests (Section 14) will usually
attempt to satisfy all of the requested ranges, since sending less
data will likely result in another client request for the remainder.
However, a server might want to send only a subset of the data
requested for reasons of its own, such as temporary unavailability,
cache efficiency, load balancing, etc. Since a 206 response is self-
descriptive, the client can still understand a response that only
partially satisfies its range request.
A client MUST inspect a 206 response's Content-Type and Content-Range
field(s) to determine what parts are enclosed and whether additional
requests are needed.
A server that generates a 206 response MUST generate the following
header fields, in addition to those required in the subsections
below, if the field would have been sent in a 200 (OK) response to
the same request: Date, Cache-Control, ETag, Expires,
Content-Location, and Vary.
A Content-Length header field present in a 206 response indicates the
number of octets in the content of this message, which is usually not
the complete length of the selected representation. Each
Content-Range header field includes information about the selected
representation's complete length.
A sender that generates a 206 response to a request with an If-Range
header field SHOULD NOT generate other representation header fields
beyond those required, because the client already has a prior
response containing those header fields. Otherwise, a sender MUST
generate all of the representation header fields that would have been
sent in a 200 (OK) response to the same request.
A 206 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).
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15.3.7.1. Single Part
If a single part is being transferred, the server generating the 206
response MUST generate a Content-Range header field, describing what
range of the selected representation is enclosed, and a content
consisting of the range. For example:
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT
Content-Range: bytes 21010-47021/47022
Content-Length: 26012
Content-Type: image/gif
... 26012 bytes of partial image data ...
15.3.7.2. Multiple Parts
If multiple parts are being transferred, the server generating the
206 response MUST generate "multipart/byteranges" content, as defined
in Section 14.6, and a Content-Type header field containing the
multipart/byteranges media type and its required boundary parameter.
To avoid confusion with single-part responses, a server MUST NOT
generate a Content-Range header field in the HTTP header section of a
multiple part response (this field will be sent in each part
instead).
Within the header area of each body part in the multipart content,
the server MUST generate a Content-Range header field corresponding
to the range being enclosed in that body part. If the selected
representation would have had a Content-Type header field in a 200
(OK) response, the server SHOULD generate that same Content-Type
header field in the header area of each body part. For example:
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HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT
Content-Length: 1741
Content-Type: multipart/byteranges; boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Range: bytes 500-999/8000
...the first range...
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Range: bytes 7000-7999/8000
...the second range
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES--
When multiple ranges are requested, a server MAY coalesce any of the
ranges that overlap, or that are separated by a gap that is smaller
than the overhead of sending multiple parts, regardless of the order
in which the corresponding range-spec appeared in the received Range
header field. Since the typical overhead between each part of a
multipart/byteranges is around 80 bytes, depending on the selected
representation's media type and the chosen boundary parameter length,
it can be less efficient to transfer many small disjoint parts than
it is to transfer the entire selected representation.
A server MUST NOT generate a multipart response to a request for a
single range, since a client that does not request multiple parts
might not support multipart responses. However, a server MAY
generate a multipart/byteranges response with only a single body part
if multiple ranges were requested and only one range was found to be
satisfiable or only one range remained after coalescing. A client
that cannot process a multipart/byteranges response MUST NOT generate
a request that asks for multiple ranges.
A server that generates a multipart response SHOULD send the parts in
the same order that the corresponding range-spec appeared in the
received Range header field, excluding those ranges that were deemed
unsatisfiable or that were coalesced into other ranges. A client
that receives a multipart response MUST inspect the Content-Range
header field present in each body part in order to determine which
range is contained in that body part; a client cannot rely on
receiving the same ranges that it requested, nor the same order that
it requested.
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15.3.7.3. Combining Parts
A response might transfer only a subrange of a representation if the
connection closed prematurely or if the request used one or more
Range specifications. After several such transfers, a client might
have received several ranges of the same representation. These
ranges can only be safely combined if they all have in common the
same strong validator (Section 8.8.1).
A client that has received multiple partial responses to GET requests
on a target resource MAY combine those responses into a larger
continuous range if they share the same strong validator.
If the most recent response is an incomplete 200 (OK) response, then
the header fields of that response are used for any combined response
and replace those of the matching stored responses.
If the most recent response is a 206 (Partial Content) response and
at least one of the matching stored responses is a 200 (OK), then the
combined response header fields consist of the most recent 200
response's header fields. If all of the matching stored responses
are 206 responses, then the stored response with the most recent
header fields is used as the source of header fields for the combined
response, except that the client MUST use other header fields
provided in the new response, aside from Content-Range, to replace
all instances of the corresponding header fields in the stored
response.
The combined response content consists of the union of partial
content ranges in the new response and each of the selected
responses. If the union consists of the entire range of the
representation, then the client MUST process the combined response as
if it were a complete 200 (OK) response, including a Content-Length
header field that reflects the complete length. Otherwise, the
client MUST process the set of continuous ranges as one of the
following: an incomplete 200 (OK) response if the combined response
is a prefix of the representation, a single 206 (Partial Content)
response containing multipart/byteranges content, or multiple 206
(Partial Content) responses, each with one continuous range that is
indicated by a Content-Range header field.
15.4. Redirection 3xx
The _3xx (Redirection)_ class of status code indicates that further
action needs to be taken by the user agent in order to fulfill the
request. There are several types of redirects:
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1. Redirects that indicate this resource might be available at a
different URI, as provided by the Location header field, as in
the status codes 301 (Moved Permanently), 302 (Found), 307
(Temporary Redirect), and 308 (Permanent Redirect).
2. Redirection that offers a choice among matching resources capable
of representing this resource, as in the 300 (Multiple Choices)
status code.
3. Redirection to a different resource, identified by the Location
header field, that can represent an indirect response to the
request, as in the 303 (See Other) status code.
4. Redirection to a previously stored result, as in the 304 (Not
Modified) status code.
If a Location header field (Section 10.2.3) is provided, the user
agent MAY automatically redirect its request to the URI referenced by
the Location field value, even if the specific status code is not
understood. Automatic redirection needs to be done with care for
methods not known to be safe, as defined in Section 9.2.1, since the
user might not wish to redirect an unsafe request.
When automatically following a redirected request, the user agent
SHOULD resend the original request message with the following
modifications:
1. Replace the target URI with the URI referenced by the redirection
response's Location header field value after resolving it
relative to the original request's target URI.
2. Remove header fields that were automatically generated by the
implementation, replacing them with updated values as appropriate
to the new request. This includes:
1. Connection-specific header fields (see Section 7.6.1),
2. Header fields specific to the client's proxy configuration,
including (but not limited to) Proxy-Authorization,
3. Origin-specific header fields (if any), including (but not
limited to) Host,
4. Validating header fields that were added by the
implementation's cache (e.g., If-None-Match,
If-Modified-Since),
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5. Resource-specific header fields, including (but not limited
to) Referer, Origin, Authorization, and Cookie.
3. Consider removing header fields that were not automatically
generated by the implementation (i.e., those present in the
request because they were added by the calling context) where
there are security implications; this includes but is not limited
to Authorization and Cookie.
4. Change the request method according to the redirecting status
code's semantics, if applicable.
5. If the request method has been changed to GET or HEAD, remove
content-specific header fields, including (but not limited to)
Content-Encoding, Content-Language, Content-Location,
Content-Type, Content-Length, Digest, ETag, Last-Modified.
| *Note:* In HTTP/1.0, the status codes 301 (Moved Permanently)
| and 302 (Found) were defined for the first type of redirect
| ([HTTP/1.0], Section 9.3). Early user agents split on whether
| the method applied to the redirect target would be the same as
| the original request or would be rewritten as GET. Although
| HTTP originally defined the former semantics for 301 and 302
| (to match its original implementation at CERN), and defined 303
| (See Other) to match the latter semantics, prevailing practice
| gradually converged on the latter semantics for 301 and 302 as
| well. The first revision of HTTP/1.1 added 307 (Temporary
| Redirect) to indicate the former semantics of 302 without being
| impacted by divergent practice. For the same reason, 308
| (Permanent Redirect) was later on added in [RFC7538] to match
| 301. Over 10 years later, most user agents still do method
| rewriting for 301 and 302; therefore, [RFC7231] made that
| behavior conformant when the original request is POST.
A client SHOULD detect and intervene in cyclical redirections (i.e.,
"infinite" redirection loops).
| *Note:* An earlier version of this specification recommended a
| maximum of five redirections ([RFC2068], Section 10.3).
| Content developers need to be aware that some clients might
| implement such a fixed limitation.
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15.4.1. 300 Multiple Choices
The _300 (Multiple Choices)_ status code indicates that the target
resource has more than one representation, each with its own more
specific identifier, and information about the alternatives is being
provided so that the user (or user agent) can select a preferred
representation by redirecting its request to one or more of those
identifiers. In other words, the server desires that the user agent
engage in reactive negotiation to select the most appropriate
representation(s) for its needs (Section 12).
If the server has a preferred choice, the server SHOULD generate a
Location header field containing a preferred choice's URI reference.
The user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic
redirection.
For request methods other than HEAD, the server SHOULD generate
content in the 300 response containing a list of representation
metadata and URI reference(s) from which the user or user agent can
choose the one most preferred. The user agent MAY make a selection
from that list automatically if it understands the provided media
type. A specific format for automatic selection is not defined by
this specification because HTTP tries to remain orthogonal to the
definition of its content. In practice, the representation is
provided in some easily parsed format believed to be acceptable to
the user agent, as determined by shared design or content
negotiation, or in some commonly accepted hypertext format.
A 300 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
| *Note:* The original proposal for the 300 status code defined
| the URI header field as providing a list of alternative
| representations, such that it would be usable for 200, 300, and
| 406 responses and be transferred in responses to the HEAD
| method. However, lack of deployment and disagreement over
| syntax led to both URI and Alternates (a subsequent proposal)
| being dropped from this specification. It is possible to
| communicate the list as a Link header field value [RFC8288]
| whose members have a relationship of "alternate", though
| deployment is a chicken-and-egg problem.
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15.4.2. 301 Moved Permanently
The _301 (Moved Permanently)_ status code indicates that the target
resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future
references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs.
Clients with link-editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link
references to the target URI to one or more of the new references
sent by the server, where possible.
The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response
containing a preferred URI reference for the new permanent URI. The
user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic
redirection. The server's response content usually contains a short
hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).
| *Note:* For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the
| request method from POST to GET for the subsequent request. If
| this behavior is undesired, the 308 (Permanent Redirect) status
| code can be used instead.
A 301 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
15.4.3. 302 Found
The _302 (Found)_ status code indicates that the target resource
resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection
might be altered on occasion, the client ought to continue to use the
target URI for future requests.
The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response
containing a URI reference for the different URI. The user agent MAY
use the Location field value for automatic redirection. The server's
response content usually contains a short hypertext note with a
hyperlink to the different URI(s).
| *Note:* For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the
| request method from POST to GET for the subsequent request. If
| this behavior is undesired, the 307 (Temporary Redirect) status
| code can be used instead.
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15.4.4. 303 See Other
The _303 (See Other)_ status code indicates that the server is
redirecting the user agent to a different resource, as indicated by a
URI in the Location header field, which is intended to provide an
indirect response to the original request. A user agent can perform
a retrieval request targeting that URI (a GET or HEAD request if
using HTTP), which might also be redirected, and present the eventual
result as an answer to the original request. Note that the new URI
in the Location header field is not considered equivalent to the
target URI.
This status code is applicable to any HTTP method. It is primarily
used to allow the output of a POST action to redirect the user agent
to a selected resource, since doing so provides the information
corresponding to the POST response in a form that can be separately
identified, bookmarked, and cached, independent of the original
request.
A 303 response to a GET request indicates that the origin server does
not have a representation of the target resource that can be
transferred by the server over HTTP. However, the Location field
value refers to a resource that is descriptive of the target
resource, such that making a retrieval request on that other resource
might result in a representation that is useful to recipients without
implying that it represents the original target resource. Note that
answers to the questions of what can be represented, what
representations are adequate, and what might be a useful description
are outside the scope of HTTP.
Except for responses to a HEAD request, the representation of a 303
response ought to contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to
the same URI reference provided in the Location header field.
15.4.5. 304 Not Modified
The _304 (Not Modified)_ status code indicates that a conditional GET
or HEAD request has been received and would have resulted in a 200
(OK) response if it were not for the fact that the condition
evaluated to false. In other words, there is no need for the server
to transfer a representation of the target resource because the
request indicates that the client, which made the request
conditional, already has a valid representation; the server is
therefore redirecting the client to make use of that stored
representation as if it were the content of a 200 (OK) response.
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The server generating a 304 response MUST generate any of the
following header fields that would have been sent in a 200 (OK)
response to the same request: Cache-Control, Content-Location, Date,
ETag, Expires, and Vary.
Since the goal of a 304 response is to minimize information transfer
when the recipient already has one or more cached representations, a
sender SHOULD NOT generate representation metadata other than the
above listed fields unless said metadata exists for the purpose of
guiding cache updates (e.g., Last-Modified might be useful if the
response does not have an ETag field).
Requirements on a cache that receives a 304 response are defined in
Section 4.3.4 of [CACHING]. If the conditional request originated
with an outbound client, such as a user agent with its own cache
sending a conditional GET to a shared proxy, then the proxy SHOULD
forward the 304 response to that client.
A 304 response is terminated by the end of the header section; it
cannot contain content or trailers.
15.4.6. 305 Use Proxy
The _305 (Use Proxy)_ status code was defined in a previous version
of this specification and is now deprecated (Appendix B of
[RFC7231]).
15.4.7. 306 (Unused)
The 306 status code was defined in a previous version of this
specification, is no longer used, and the code is reserved.
15.4.8. 307 Temporary Redirect
The _307 (Temporary Redirect)_ status code indicates that the target
resource resides temporarily under a different URI and the user agent
MUST NOT change the request method if it performs an automatic
redirection to that URI. Since the redirection can change over time,
the client ought to continue using the original target URI for future
requests.
The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response
containing a URI reference for the different URI. The user agent MAY
use the Location field value for automatic redirection. The server's
response content usually contains a short hypertext note with a
hyperlink to the different URI(s).
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15.4.9. 308 Permanent Redirect
The _308 (Permanent Redirect)_ status code indicates that the target
resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future
references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs.
Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link
references to the target URI to one or more of the new references
sent by the server, where possible.
The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response
containing a preferred URI reference for the new permanent URI. The
user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic
redirection. The server's response content usually contains a short
hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).
A 308 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
| *Note:* This status code is much younger (June 2014) than its
| sibling codes, and thus might not be recognized everywhere.
| See Section 4 of [RFC7538] for deployment considerations.
15.5. Client Error 4xx
The _4xx (Client Error)_ class of status code indicates that the
client seems to have erred. Except when responding to a HEAD
request, the server SHOULD send a representation containing an
explanation of the error situation, and whether it is a temporary or
permanent condition. These status codes are applicable to any
request method. User agents SHOULD display any included
representation to the user.
15.5.1. 400 Bad Request
The _400 (Bad Request)_ status code indicates that the server cannot
or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to
be a client error (e.g., malformed request syntax, invalid request
message framing, or deceptive request routing).
15.5.2. 401 Unauthorized
The _401 (Unauthorized)_ status code indicates that the request has
not been applied because it lacks valid authentication credentials
for the target resource. The server generating a 401 response MUST
send a WWW-Authenticate header field (Section 11.6.1) containing at
least one challenge applicable to the target resource.
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If the request included authentication credentials, then the 401
response indicates that authorization has been refused for those
credentials. The user agent MAY repeat the request with a new or
replaced Authorization header field (Section 11.6.2). If the 401
response contains the same challenge as the prior response, and the
user agent has already attempted authentication at least once, then
the user agent SHOULD present the enclosed representation to the
user, since it usually contains relevant diagnostic information.
15.5.3. 402 Payment Required
The _402 (Payment Required)_ status code is reserved for future use.
15.5.4. 403 Forbidden
The _403 (Forbidden)_ status code indicates that the server
understood the request but refuses to fulfill it. A server that
wishes to make public why the request has been forbidden can describe
that reason in the response content (if any).
If authentication credentials were provided in the request, the
server considers them insufficient to grant access. The client
SHOULD NOT automatically repeat the request with the same
credentials. The client MAY repeat the request with new or different
credentials. However, a request might be forbidden for reasons
unrelated to the credentials.
An origin server that wishes to "hide" the current existence of a
forbidden target resource MAY instead respond with a status code of
404 (Not Found).
15.5.5. 404 Not Found
The _404 (Not Found)_ status code indicates that the origin server
did not find a current representation for the target resource or is
not willing to disclose that one exists. A 404 status code does not
indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or
permanent; the 410 (Gone) status code is preferred over 404 if the
origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that
the condition is likely to be permanent.
A 404 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
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15.5.6. 405 Method Not Allowed
The _405 (Method Not Allowed)_ status code indicates that the method
received in the request-line is known by the origin server but not
supported by the target resource. The origin server MUST generate an
Allow header field in a 405 response containing a list of the target
resource's currently supported methods.
A 405 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
15.5.7. 406 Not Acceptable
The _406 (Not Acceptable)_ status code indicates that the target
resource does not have a current representation that would be
acceptable to the user agent, according to the proactive negotiation
header fields received in the request (Section 12.1), and the server
is unwilling to supply a default representation.
The server SHOULD generate content containing a list of available
representation characteristics and corresponding resource identifiers
from which the user or user agent can choose the one most
appropriate. A user agent MAY automatically select the most
appropriate choice from that list. However, this specification does
not define any standard for such automatic selection, as described in
Section 15.4.1.
15.5.8. 407 Proxy Authentication Required
The _407 (Proxy Authentication Required)_ status code is similar to
401 (Unauthorized), but it indicates that the client needs to
authenticate itself in order to use a proxy for this request. The
proxy MUST send a Proxy-Authenticate header field (Section 11.7.1)
containing a challenge applicable to that proxy for the request. The
client MAY repeat the request with a new or replaced
Proxy-Authorization header field (Section 11.7.2).
15.5.9. 408 Request Timeout
The _408 (Request Timeout)_ status code indicates that the server did
not receive a complete request message within the time that it was
prepared to wait.
If the client has an outstanding request in transit, it MAY repeat
that request. If the current connection is not usable (e.g., as it
would be in HTTP/1.1, because request delimitation is lost), a new
connection will be used.
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15.5.10. 409 Conflict
The _409 (Conflict)_ status code indicates that the request could not
be completed due to a conflict with the current state of the target
resource. This code is used in situations where the user might be
able to resolve the conflict and resubmit the request. The server
SHOULD generate content that includes enough information for a user
to recognize the source of the conflict.
Conflicts are most likely to occur in response to a PUT request. For
example, if versioning were being used and the representation being
PUT included changes to a resource that conflict with those made by
an earlier (third-party) request, the origin server might use a 409
response to indicate that it can't complete the request. In this
case, the response representation would likely contain information
useful for merging the differences based on the revision history.
15.5.11. 410 Gone
The _410 (Gone)_ status code indicates that access to the target
resource is no longer available at the origin server and that this
condition is likely to be permanent. If the origin server does not
know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition
is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) ought to be used
instead.
The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web
maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is
intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that
remote links to that resource be removed. Such an event is common
for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging to
individuals no longer associated with the origin server's site. It
is not necessary to mark all permanently unavailable resources as
"gone" or to keep the mark for any length of time -- that is left to
the discretion of the server owner.
A 410 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
15.5.12. 411 Length Required
The _411 (Length Required)_ status code indicates that the server
refuses to accept the request without a defined Content-Length
(Section 8.6). The client MAY repeat the request if it adds a valid
Content-Length header field containing the length of the request
content.
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15.5.13. 412 Precondition Failed
The _412 (Precondition Failed)_ status code indicates that one or
more conditions given in the request header fields evaluated to false
when tested on the server (Section 13). This response status code
allows the client to place preconditions on the current resource
state (its current representations and metadata) and, thus, prevent
the request method from being applied if the target resource is in an
unexpected state.
15.5.14. 413 Content Too Large
The _413 (Content Too Large)_ status code indicates that the server
is refusing to process a request because the request content is
larger than the server is willing or able to process. The server MAY
terminate the request, if the protocol version in use allows it;
otherwise, the server MAY close the connection.
If the condition is temporary, the server SHOULD generate a
Retry-After header field to indicate that it is temporary and after
what time the client MAY try again.
15.5.15. 414 URI Too Long
The _414 (URI Too Long)_ status code indicates that the server is
refusing to service the request because the target URI is longer than
the server is willing to interpret. This rare condition is only
likely to occur when a client has improperly converted a POST request
to a GET request with long query information, when the client has
descended into a "black hole" of redirection (e.g., a redirected URI
prefix that points to a suffix of itself) or when the server is under
attack by a client attempting to exploit potential security holes.
A 414 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
15.5.16. 415 Unsupported Media Type
The _415 (Unsupported Media Type)_ status code indicates that the
origin server is refusing to service the request because the content
is in a format not supported by this method on the target resource.
The format problem might be due to the request's indicated
Content-Type or Content-Encoding, or as a result of inspecting the
data directly.
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If the problem was caused by an unsupported content coding, the
Accept-Encoding response header field (Section 12.5.3) ought to be
used to indicate what (if any) content codings would have been
accepted in the request.
On the other hand, if the cause was an unsupported media type, the
Accept response header field (Section 12.5.1) can be used to indicate
what media types would have been accepted in the request.
15.5.17. 416 Range Not Satisfiable
The _416 (Range Not Satisfiable)_ status code indicates that the set
of ranges in the request's Range header field (Section 14.2) has been
rejected either because none of the requested ranges are satisfiable
or because the client has requested an excessive number of small or
overlapping ranges (a potential denial of service attack).
Each range unit defines what is required for its own range sets to be
satisfiable. For example, Section 14.1.2 defines what makes a bytes
range set satisfiable.
A server that generates a 416 response to a byte-range request SHOULD
generate a Content-Range header field specifying the current length
of the selected representation (Section 14.4).
For example:
HTTP/1.1 416 Range Not Satisfiable
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:41:54 GMT
Content-Range: bytes */47022
| *Note:* Because servers are free to ignore Range, many
| implementations will respond with the entire selected
| representation in a 200 (OK) response. That is partly because
| most clients are prepared to receive a 200 (OK) to complete the
| task (albeit less efficiently) and partly because clients might
| not stop making an invalid range request until they have
| received a complete representation. Thus, clients cannot
| depend on receiving a 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) response even
| when it is most appropriate.
15.5.18. 417 Expectation Failed
The _417 (Expectation Failed)_ status code indicates that the
expectation given in the request's Expect header field
(Section 10.1.1) could not be met by at least one of the inbound
servers.
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15.5.19. 418 (Unused)
[RFC2324] was an April 1 RFC that lampooned the various ways HTTP was
abused; one such abuse was the definition of an application-specific
418 status code. In the intervening years, this status code has been
widely implemented as an "Easter Egg", and therefore is effectively
consumed by this use.
Therefore, the 418 status code is reserved in the IANA HTTP Status
Code Registry. This indicates that the status code cannot be
assigned to other applications currently. If future circumstances
require its use (e.g., exhaustion of 4NN status codes), it can be re-
assigned to another use.
15.5.20. 421 Misdirected Request
The 421 (Misdirected Request) status code indicates that the request
was directed at a server that is unable or unwilling to produce an
authoritative response for the target URI. An origin server (or
gateway acting on behalf of the origin server) sends 421 to reject a
target URI that does not match an origin for which the server has
been configured (Section 4.3.1) or does not match the connection
context over which the request was received (Section 7.4).
A client that receives a 421 (Misdirected Request) response MAY retry
the request, whether or not the request method is idempotent, over a
different connection, such as a fresh connection specific to the
target resource's origin, or via an alternative service [ALTSVC].
A proxy MUST NOT generate a 421 response.
15.5.21. 422 Unprocessable Content
The 422 (Unprocessable Content) status code indicates that the server
understands the content type of the request content (hence a 415
(Unsupported Media Type) status code is inappropriate), and the
syntax of the request content is correct, but was unable to process
the contained instructions. For example, this status code can be
sent if an XML request content contains well-formed (i.e.,
syntactically correct), but semantically erroneous XML instructions.
15.5.22. 426 Upgrade Required
The _426 (Upgrade Required)_ status code indicates that the server
refuses to perform the request using the current protocol but might
be willing to do so after the client upgrades to a different
protocol. The server MUST send an Upgrade header field in a 426
response to indicate the required protocol(s) (Section 7.8).
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Example:
HTTP/1.1 426 Upgrade Required
Upgrade: HTTP/3.0
Connection: Upgrade
Content-Length: 53
Content-Type: text/plain
This service requires use of the HTTP/3.0 protocol.
15.6. Server Error 5xx
The _5xx (Server Error)_ class of status code indicates that the
server is aware that it has erred or is incapable of performing the
requested method. Except when responding to a HEAD request, the
server SHOULD send a representation containing an explanation of the
error situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent
condition. A user agent SHOULD display any included representation
to the user. These response codes are applicable to any request
method.
15.6.1. 500 Internal Server Error
The _500 (Internal Server Error)_ status code indicates that the
server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from
fulfilling the request.
15.6.2. 501 Not Implemented
The _501 (Not Implemented)_ status code indicates that the server
does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request.
This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize
the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any
resource.
A 501 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).
15.6.3. 502 Bad Gateway
The _502 (Bad Gateway)_ status code indicates that the server, while
acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from an
inbound server it accessed while attempting to fulfill the request.
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15.6.4. 503 Service Unavailable
The _503 (Service Unavailable)_ status code indicates that the server
is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overload
or scheduled maintenance, which will likely be alleviated after some
delay. The server MAY send a Retry-After header field
(Section 10.2.4) to suggest an appropriate amount of time for the
client to wait before retrying the request.
| *Note:* The existence of the 503 status code does not imply
| that a server has to use it when becoming overloaded. Some
| servers might simply refuse the connection.
15.6.5. 504 Gateway Timeout
The _504 (Gateway Timeout)_ status code indicates that the server,
while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response
from an upstream server it needed to access in order to complete the
request.
15.6.6. 505 HTTP Version Not Supported
The _505 (HTTP Version Not Supported)_ status code indicates that the
server does not support, or refuses to support, the major version of
HTTP that was used in the request message. The server is indicating
that it is unable or unwilling to complete the request using the same
major version as the client, as described in Section 2.5, other than
with this error message. The server SHOULD generate a representation
for the 505 response that describes why that version is not supported
and what other protocols are supported by that server.
16. Extending HTTP
HTTP defines a number of generic extension points that can be used to
introduce capabilities to the protocol without introducing a new
version, including methods, status codes, field names, and further
extensibility points within defined fields, such as authentication
schemes and cache-directives (see Cache-Control extensions in
Section 5.2.3 of [CACHING]). Because the semantics of HTTP are not
versioned, these extension points are persistent; the version of the
protocol in use does not affect their semantics.
Version-independent extensions are discouraged from depending on or
interacting with the specific version of the protocol in use. When
this is unavoidable, careful consideration needs to be given to how
the extension can interoperate across versions.
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Additionally, specific versions of HTTP might have their own
extensibility points, such as transfer-codings in HTTP/1.1
(Section 6.1 of [HTTP/1.1]) and HTTP/2 ([HTTP/2]) SETTINGS or frame
types. These extension points are specific to the version of the
protocol they occur within.
Version-specific extensions cannot override or modify the semantics
of a version-independent mechanism or extension point (like a method
or header field) without explicitly being allowed by that protocol
element. For example, the CONNECT method (Section 9.3.6) allows
this.
These guidelines assure that the protocol operates correctly and
predictably, even when parts of the path implement different versions
of HTTP.
16.1. Method Extensibility
16.1.1. Method Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Method Registry", maintained
by IANA at , registers
method names.
HTTP method registrations MUST include the following fields:
o Method Name (see Section 9)
o Safe ("yes" or "no", see Section 9.2.1)
o Idempotent ("yes" or "no", see Section 9.2.2)
o Pointer to specification text
Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see
[RFC8126], Section 4.8).
16.1.2. Considerations for New Methods
Standardized methods are generic; that is, they are potentially
applicable to any resource, not just one particular media type, kind
of resource, or application. As such, it is preferred that new
methods be registered in a document that isn't specific to a single
application or data format, since orthogonal technologies deserve
orthogonal specification.
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Since message parsing (Section 6) needs to be independent of method
semantics (aside from responses to HEAD), definitions of new methods
cannot change the parsing algorithm or prohibit the presence of
content on either the request or the response message. Definitions
of new methods can specify that only a zero-length content is allowed
by requiring a Content-Length header field with a value of "0".
Likewise, new methods cannot use the special host:port and asterisk
forms of request target that are allowed for CONNECT and OPTIONS,
respectively (Section 7.1). A full URI in absolute form is needed
for the target URI, which means either the request target needs to be
sent in absolute form or the target URI will be reconstructed from
the request context in the same way it is for other methods.
A new method definition needs to indicate whether it is safe
(Section 9.2.1), idempotent (Section 9.2.2), cacheable
(Section 9.2.3), what semantics are to be associated with the request
content (if any), and what refinements the method makes to header
field or status code semantics. If the new method is cacheable, its
definition ought to describe how, and under what conditions, a cache
can store a response and use it to satisfy a subsequent request. The
new method ought to describe whether it can be made conditional
(Section 13.1) and, if so, how a server responds when the condition
is false. Likewise, if the new method might have some use for
partial response semantics (Section 14.2), it ought to document this,
too.
| *Note:* Avoid defining a method name that starts with "M-",
| since that prefix might be misinterpreted as having the
| semantics assigned to it by [RFC2774].
16.2. Status Code Extensibility
16.2.1. Status Code Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code Registry",
maintained by IANA at , registers status code numbers.
A registration MUST include the following fields:
o Status Code (3 digits)
o Short Description
o Pointer to specification text
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Values to be added to the HTTP status code namespace require IETF
Review (see [RFC8126], Section 4.8).
16.2.2. Considerations for New Status Codes
When it is necessary to express semantics for a response that are not
defined by current status codes, a new status code can be registered.
Status codes are generic; they are potentially applicable to any
resource, not just one particular media type, kind of resource, or
application of HTTP. As such, it is preferred that new status codes
be registered in a document that isn't specific to a single
application.
New status codes are required to fall under one of the categories
defined in Section 15. To allow existing parsers to process the
response message, new status codes cannot disallow content, although
they can mandate a zero-length content.
Proposals for new status codes that are not yet widely deployed ought
to avoid allocating a specific number for the code until there is
clear consensus that it will be registered; instead, early drafts can
use a notation such as "4NN", or "3N0" .. "3N9", to indicate the
class of the proposed status code(s) without consuming a number
prematurely.
The definition of a new status code ought to explain the request
conditions that would cause a response containing that status code
(e.g., combinations of request header fields and/or method(s)) along
with any dependencies on response header fields (e.g., what fields
are required, what fields can modify the semantics, and what field
semantics are further refined when used with the new status code).
By default, a status code applies only to the request corresponding
to the response it occurs within. If a status code applies to a
larger scope of applicability -- for example, all requests to the
resource in question, or all requests to a server -- this must be
explicitly specified. When doing so, it should be noted that not all
clients can be expected to consistently apply a larger scope, because
they might not understand the new status code.
The definition of a new final status code ought to specify whether or
not it is heuristically cacheable. Note that all final status codes
can be cached if the response they occur in has explicit freshness
information; however, those status codes that are defined as being
heuristically cacheable are allowed to be cached without explicit
freshness information. Likewise, the definition of a status code can
place constraints upon cache behavior, if the 'must-understand' cache
directive is used. See [CACHING] for more information.
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Finally, the definition of a new status code ought to indicate
whether the content has any implied association with an identified
resource (Section 6.4.2).
16.3. Field Extensibility
HTTP's most widely used extensibility point is the definition of new
header and trailer fields.
New fields can be defined such that, when they are understood by a
recipient, they override or enhance the interpretation of previously
defined fields, define preconditions on request evaluation, or refine
the meaning of responses.
However, defining a field doesn't guarantee its deployment or
recognition by recipients. Most fields are designed with the
expectation that a recipient can safely ignore (but forward
downstream) any field not recognized. In other cases, the sender's
ability to understand a given field might be indicated by its prior
communication, perhaps in the protocol version or fields that it sent
in prior messages, or its use of a specific media type. Likewise,
direct inspection of support might be possible through an OPTIONS
request or by interacting with a defined well-known URI [RFC8615] if
such inspection is defined along with the field being introduced.
16.3.1. Field Name Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name Registry" defines
the namespace for HTTP field names.
Any party can request registration of an HTTP field. See
Section 16.3.2 for considerations to take into account when creating
a new HTTP field.
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name Registry" is
located at .
Registration requests can be made by following the instructions
located there or by sending an email to the "ietf-http-wg@w3.org"
mailing list.
Field names are registered on the advice of a Designated Expert
(appointed by the IESG or their delegate). Fields with the status
'permanent' are Specification Required ([RFC8126], Section 4.6).
Registration requests consist of at least the following information:
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Field name:
The requested field name. It MUST conform to the field-name
syntax defined in Section 5.1, and SHOULD be restricted to just
letters, digits, and hyphen ('-') characters, with the first
character being a letter.
Status:
"permanent" or "provisional".
Specification document(s):
Reference to the document that specifies the field, preferably
including a URI that can be used to retrieve a copy of the
document. An indication of the relevant section(s) can also be
included, but is not required.
And, optionally:
Comments: Additional information, such as about reserved entries.
The Expert(s) can define additional fields to be collected in the
registry, in consultation with the community.
Standards-defined names have a status of "permanent". Other names
can also be registered as permanent, if the Expert(s) find that they
are in use, in consultation with the community. Other names should
be registered as "provisional".
Provisional entries can be removed by the Expert(s) if -- in
consultation with the community -- the Expert(s) find that they are
not in use. The Experts can change a provisional entry's status to
permanent at any time.
Note that names can be registered by third parties (including the
Expert(s)), if the Expert(s) determines that an unregistered name is
widely deployed and not likely to be registered in a timely manner
otherwise.
16.3.2. Considerations for New Fields
HTTP header and trailer fields are a widely-used extension point for
the protocol. While they can be used in an ad hoc fashion, fields
that are intended for wider use need to be carefully documented to
ensure interoperability.
In particular, authors of specifications defining new fields are
advised to consider and, where appropriate, document the following
aspects:
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o Under what conditions the field can be used; e.g., only in
responses or requests, in all messages, only on responses to a
particular request method, etc.
o Whether the field semantics are further refined by their context,
such as their use with certain request methods or status codes.
o The scope of applicability for the information conveyed. By
default, fields apply only to the message they are associated
with, but some response fields are designed to apply to all
representations of a resource, the resource itself, or an even
broader scope. Specifications that expand the scope of a response
field will need to carefully consider issues such as content
negotiation, the time period of applicability, and (in some cases)
multi-tenant server deployments.
o Under what conditions intermediaries are allowed to insert,
delete, or modify the field's value.
o If the field is allowable in trailers; by default, it will not be
(see Section 6.5.1).
o Whether it is appropriate or even required to list the field name
in the Connection header field (i.e., if the field is to be hop-
by-hop; see Section 7.6.1).
o Whether the field introduces any additional security
considerations, such as disclosure of privacy-related data.
Request header fields have additional considerations that need to be
documented if the default behaviour is not appropriate:
o If it is appropriate to list the field name in a Vary response
header field (e.g., when the request header field is used by an
origin server's content selection algorithm; see Section 12.5.5).
o If the field is intended to be stored when received in a PUT
request (see Section 9.3.4).
o If the field ought to be removed when automatically redirecting a
request, due to security concerns (see Section 15.4).
16.3.2.1. Considerations for New Field Names
Authors of specifications defining new fields are advised to choose a
short but descriptive field name. Short names avoid needless data
transmission; descriptive names avoid confusion and "squatting" on
names that might have broader uses.
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To that end, limited-use fields (such as a header confined to a
single application or use case) are encouraged to use a name that
includes that use (or an abbreviation) as a prefix; for example, if
the Foo Application needs a Description field, it might use "Foo-
Desc"; "Description" is too generic, and "Foo-Description" is
needlessly long.
While the field-name syntax is defined to allow any token character,
in practice some implementations place limits on the characters they
accept in field-names. To be interoperable, new field names SHOULD
constrain themselves to alphanumeric characters, "-", and ".", and
SHOULD begin with a letter. For example, the underscore ("_")
character can be problematic when passed through non-HTTP gateway
interfaces (see Section 17.10).
Field names ought not be prefixed with "X-"; see [BCP178] for further
information.
Other prefixes are sometimes used in HTTP field names; for example,
"Accept-" is used in many content negotiation headers, and "Content-"
is used as explained in Section 6.4. These prefixes are only an aid
to recognizing the purpose of a field, and do not trigger automatic
processing.
16.3.2.2. Considerations for New Field Values
A major task in the definition of a new HTTP field is the
specification of the field value syntax: what senders should
generate, and how recipients should infer semantics from what is
received.
Authors are encouraged (but not required) to use either the ABNF
rules in this specification or those in [RFC8941] to define the
syntax of new field values.
Authors are advised to carefully consider how the combination of
multiple field lines will impact them (see Section 5.3). Because
senders might erroneously send multiple values, and both
intermediaries and HTTP libraries can perform combination
automatically, this applies to all field values -- even when only a
single value is anticipated.
Therefore, authors are advised to delimit or encode values that
contain commas (e.g., with the quoted-string rule of Section 5.6.4,
the String data type of [RFC8941], or a field-specific encoding).
This ensures that commas within field data are not confused with the
commas that delimit a list value.
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For example, the Content-Type field value only allows commas inside
quoted strings, which can be reliably parsed even when multiple
values are present. The Location field value provides a counter-
example that should not be emulated: because URIs can include commas,
it is not possible to reliably distinguish between a single value
that includes a comma from two values.
Authors of fields with a singleton value (see Section 5.5) are
additionally advised to document how to treat messages where the
multiple members are present (a sensible default would be to ignore
the field, but this might not always be the right choice).
16.4. Authentication Scheme Extensibility
16.4.1. Authentication Scheme Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Authentication Scheme
Registry" defines the namespace for the authentication schemes in
challenges and credentials. It is maintained at
.
Registrations MUST include the following fields:
o Authentication Scheme Name
o Pointer to specification text
o Notes (optional)
Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see
[RFC8126], Section 4.8).
16.4.2. Considerations for New Authentication Schemes
There are certain aspects of the HTTP Authentication framework that
put constraints on how new authentication schemes can work:
o HTTP authentication is presumed to be stateless: all of the
information necessary to authenticate a request MUST be provided
in the request, rather than be dependent on the server remembering
prior requests. Authentication based on, or bound to, the
underlying connection is outside the scope of this specification
and inherently flawed unless steps are taken to ensure that the
connection cannot be used by any party other than the
authenticated user (see Section 3.3).
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o The authentication parameter "realm" is reserved for defining
protection spaces as described in Section 11.5. New schemes MUST
NOT use it in a way incompatible with that definition.
o The "token68" notation was introduced for compatibility with
existing authentication schemes and can only be used once per
challenge or credential. Thus, new schemes ought to use the auth-
param syntax instead, because otherwise future extensions will be
impossible.
o The parsing of challenges and credentials is defined by this
specification and cannot be modified by new authentication
schemes. When the auth-param syntax is used, all parameters ought
to support both token and quoted-string syntax, and syntactical
constraints ought to be defined on the field value after parsing
(i.e., quoted-string processing). This is necessary so that
recipients can use a generic parser that applies to all
authentication schemes.
*Note:* The fact that the value syntax for the "realm" parameter
is restricted to quoted-string was a bad design choice not to be
repeated for new parameters.
o Definitions of new schemes ought to define the treatment of
unknown extension parameters. In general, a "must-ignore" rule is
preferable to a "must-understand" rule, because otherwise it will
be hard to introduce new parameters in the presence of legacy
recipients. Furthermore, it's good to describe the policy for
defining new parameters (such as "update the specification" or
"use this registry").
o Authentication schemes need to document whether they are usable in
origin-server authentication (i.e., using WWW-Authenticate), and/
or proxy authentication (i.e., using Proxy-Authenticate).
o The credentials carried in an Authorization header field are
specific to the user agent and, therefore, have the same effect on
HTTP caches as the "private" Cache-Control response directive
(Section 5.2.2.7 of [CACHING]), within the scope of the request in
which they appear.
Therefore, new authentication schemes that choose not to carry
credentials in the Authorization header field (e.g., using a newly
defined header field) will need to explicitly disallow caching, by
mandating the use of Cache-Control response directives (e.g.,
"private").
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o Schemes using Authentication-Info, Proxy-Authentication-Info, or
any other authentication related response header field need to
consider and document the related security considerations (see
Section 17.16.4).
16.5. Range Unit Extensibility
16.5.1. Range Unit Registry
The "HTTP Range Unit Registry" defines the namespace for the range
unit names and refers to their corresponding specifications. It is
maintained at .
Registration of an HTTP Range Unit MUST include the following fields:
o Name
o Description
o Pointer to specification text
Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see
[RFC8126], Section 4.8).
16.5.2. Considerations for New Range Units
Other range units, such as format-specific boundaries like pages,
sections, records, rows, or time, are potentially usable in HTTP for
application-specific purposes, but are not commonly used in practice.
Implementors of alternative range units ought to consider how they
would work with content codings and general-purpose intermediaries.
16.6. Content Coding Extensibility
16.6.1. Content Coding Registry
The "HTTP Content Coding Registry", maintained by IANA at
, registers
content-coding names.
Content coding registrations MUST include the following fields:
o Name
o Description
o Pointer to specification text
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Names of content codings MUST NOT overlap with names of transfer
codings (as per the "HTTP Transfer Coding registry", located at
), unless the
encoding transformation is identical (as is the case for the
compression codings defined in Section 8.4.1).
Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see
Section 4.8 of [RFC8126]) and MUST conform to the purpose of content
coding defined in Section 8.4.1.
16.6.2. Considerations for New Content Codings
New content codings ought to be self-descriptive whenever possible,
with optional parameters discoverable within the coding format
itself, rather than rely on external metadata that might be lost
during transit.
16.7. Upgrade Token Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Upgrade Token Registry"
defines the namespace for protocol-name tokens used to identify
protocols in the Upgrade header field. The registry is maintained at
.
Each registered protocol name is associated with contact information
and an optional set of specifications that details how the connection
will be processed after it has been upgraded.
Registrations happen on a "First Come First Served" basis (see
Section 4.4 of [RFC8126]) and are subject to the following rules:
1. A protocol-name token, once registered, stays registered forever.
2. A protocol-name token is case-insensitive and registered with the
preferred case to be generated by senders.
3. The registration MUST name a responsible party for the
registration.
4. The registration MUST name a point of contact.
5. The registration MAY name a set of specifications associated with
that token. Such specifications need not be publicly available.
6. The registration SHOULD name a set of expected "protocol-version"
tokens associated with that token at the time of registration.
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7. The responsible party MAY change the registration at any time.
The IANA will keep a record of all such changes, and make them
available upon request.
8. The IESG MAY reassign responsibility for a protocol token. This
will normally only be used in the case when a responsible party
cannot be contacted.
17. Security Considerations
This section is meant to inform developers, information providers,
and users of known security concerns relevant to HTTP semantics and
its use for transferring information over the Internet.
Considerations related to caching are discussed in Section 7 of
[CACHING] and considerations related to HTTP/1.1 message syntax and
parsing are discussed in Section 11 of [HTTP/1.1].
The list of considerations below is not exhaustive. Most security
concerns related to HTTP semantics are about securing server-side
applications (code behind the HTTP interface), securing user agent
processing of content received via HTTP, or secure use of the
Internet in general, rather than security of the protocol. Various
organizations maintain topical information and links to current
research on Web application security (e.g., [OWASP]).
17.1. Establishing Authority
HTTP relies on the notion of an _authoritative response_: a response
that has been determined by (or at the direction of) the origin
server identified within the target URI to be the most appropriate
response for that request given the state of the target resource at
the time of response message origination.
When a registered name is used in the authority component, the "http"
URI scheme (Section 4.2.1) relies on the user's local name resolution
service to determine where it can find authoritative responses. This
means that any attack on a user's network host table, cached names,
or name resolution libraries becomes an avenue for attack on
establishing authority for "http" URIs. Likewise, the user's choice
of server for Domain Name Service (DNS), and the hierarchy of servers
from which it obtains resolution results, could impact the
authenticity of address mappings; DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC,
[RFC4033]) are one way to improve authenticity, as are the various
mechanisms for making DNS requests over more secure transfer
protocols.
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Furthermore, after an IP address is obtained, establishing authority
for an "http" URI is vulnerable to attacks on Internet Protocol
routing.
The "https" scheme (Section 4.2.2) is intended to prevent (or at
least reveal) many of these potential attacks on establishing
authority, provided that the negotiated connection is secured and the
client properly verifies that the communicating server's identity
matches the target URI's authority component (Section 4.3.4).
Correctly implementing such verification can be difficult (see
[Georgiev]).
Authority for a given origin server can be delegated through protocol
extensions; for example, [ALTSVC]. Likewise, the set of servers for
which a connection is considered authoritative can be changed with a
protocol extension like [RFC8336].
Providing a response from a non-authoritative source, such as a
shared proxy cache, is often useful to improve performance and
availability, but only to the extent that the source can be trusted
or the distrusted response can be safely used.
Unfortunately, communicating authority to users can be difficult.
For example, _phishing_ is an attack on the user's perception of
authority, where that perception can be misled by presenting similar
branding in hypertext, possibly aided by userinfo obfuscating the
authority component (see Section 4.2.1). User agents can reduce the
impact of phishing attacks by enabling users to easily inspect a
target URI prior to making an action, by prominently distinguishing
(or rejecting) userinfo when present, and by not sending stored
credentials and cookies when the referring document is from an
unknown or untrusted source.
17.2. Risks of Intermediaries
HTTP intermediaries are inherently situated for on-path attacks.
Compromise of the systems on which the intermediaries run can result
in serious security and privacy problems. Intermediaries might have
access to security-related information, personal information about
individual users and organizations, and proprietary information
belonging to users and content providers. A compromised
intermediary, or an intermediary implemented or configured without
regard to security and privacy considerations, might be used in the
commission of a wide range of potential attacks.
Intermediaries that contain a shared cache are especially vulnerable
to cache poisoning attacks, as described in Section 7 of [CACHING].
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Implementers need to consider the privacy and security implications
of their design and coding decisions, and of the configuration
options they provide to operators (especially the default
configuration).
Intermediaries are no more trustworthy than the people and policies
under which they operate; HTTP cannot solve this problem.
17.3. Attacks Based on File and Path Names
Origin servers frequently make use of their local file system to
manage the mapping from target URI to resource representations. Most
file systems are not designed to protect against malicious file or
path names. Therefore, an origin server needs to avoid accessing
names that have a special significance to the system when mapping the
target resource to files, folders, or directories.
For example, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, and other operating systems use
".." as a path component to indicate a directory level above the
current one, and they use specially named paths or file names to send
data to system devices. Similar naming conventions might exist
within other types of storage systems. Likewise, local storage
systems have an annoying tendency to prefer user-friendliness over
security when handling invalid or unexpected characters,
recomposition of decomposed characters, and case-normalization of
case-insensitive names.
Attacks based on such special names tend to focus on either denial-
of-service (e.g., telling the server to read from a COM port) or
disclosure of configuration and source files that are not meant to be
served.
17.4. Attacks Based on Command, Code, or Query Injection
Origin servers often use parameters within the URI as a means of
identifying system services, selecting database entries, or choosing
a data source. However, data received in a request cannot be
trusted. An attacker could construct any of the request data
elements (method, target URI, header fields, or content) to contain
data that might be misinterpreted as a command, code, or query when
passed through a command invocation, language interpreter, or
database interface.
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For example, SQL injection is a common attack wherein additional
query language is inserted within some part of the target URI or
header fields (e.g., Host, Referer, etc.). If the received data is
used directly within a SELECT statement, the query language might be
interpreted as a database command instead of a simple string value.
This type of implementation vulnerability is extremely common, in
spite of being easy to prevent.
In general, resource implementations ought to avoid use of request
data in contexts that are processed or interpreted as instructions.
Parameters ought to be compared to fixed strings and acted upon as a
result of that comparison, rather than passed through an interface
that is not prepared for untrusted data. Received data that isn't
based on fixed parameters ought to be carefully filtered or encoded
to avoid being misinterpreted.
Similar considerations apply to request data when it is stored and
later processed, such as within log files, monitoring tools, or when
included within a data format that allows embedded scripts.
17.5. Attacks via Protocol Element Length
Because HTTP uses mostly textual, character-delimited fields, parsers
are often vulnerable to attacks based on sending very long (or very
slow) streams of data, particularly where an implementation is
expecting a protocol element with no predefined length (Section 2.3).
To promote interoperability, specific recommendations are made for
minimum size limits on fields (Section 5.4). These are minimum
recommendations, chosen to be supportable even by implementations
with limited resources; it is expected that most implementations will
choose substantially higher limits.
A server can reject a message that has a target URI that is too long
(Section 15.5.15) or request content that is too large
(Section 15.5.14). Additional status codes related to capacity
limits have been defined by extensions to HTTP [RFC6585].
Recipients ought to carefully limit the extent to which they process
other protocol elements, including (but not limited to) request
methods, response status phrases, field names, numeric values, and
chunk lengths. Failure to limit such processing can result in
arbitrary code execution due to buffer or arithmetic overflows, and
increased vulnerability to denial-of-service attacks.
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17.6. Attacks using Shared-dictionary Compression
Some attacks on encrypted protocols use the differences in size
created by dynamic compression to reveal confidential information;
for example, [BREACH]. These attacks rely on creating a redundancy
between attacker-controlled content and the confidential information,
such that a dynamic compression algorithm using the same dictionary
for both content will compress more efficiently when the attacker-
controlled content matches parts of the confidential content.
HTTP messages can be compressed in a number of ways, including using
TLS compression, content codings, transfer codings, and other
extension or version-specific mechanisms.
The most effective mitigation for this risk is to disable compression
on sensitive data, or to strictly separate sensitive data from
attacker-controlled data so that they cannot share the same
compression dictionary. With careful design, a compression scheme
can be designed in a way that is not considered exploitable in
limited use cases, such as HPACK ([HPACK]).
17.7. Disclosure of Personal Information
Clients are often privy to large amounts of personal information,
including both information provided by the user to interact with
resources (e.g., the user's name, location, mail address, passwords,
encryption keys, etc.) and information about the user's browsing
activity over time (e.g., history, bookmarks, etc.). Implementations
need to prevent unintentional disclosure of personal information.
17.8. Privacy of Server Log Information
A server is in the position to save personal data about a user's
requests over time, which might identify their reading patterns or
subjects of interest. In particular, log information gathered at an
intermediary often contains a history of user agent interaction,
across a multitude of sites, that can be traced to individual users.
HTTP log information is confidential in nature; its handling is often
constrained by laws and regulations. Log information needs to be
securely stored and appropriate guidelines followed for its analysis.
Anonymization of personal information within individual entries
helps, but it is generally not sufficient to prevent real log traces
from being re-identified based on correlation with other access
characteristics. As such, access traces that are keyed to a specific
client are unsafe to publish even if the key is pseudonymous.
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To minimize the risk of theft or accidental publication, log
information ought to be purged of personally identifiable
information, including user identifiers, IP addresses, and user-
provided query parameters, as soon as that information is no longer
necessary to support operational needs for security, auditing, or
fraud control.
17.9. Disclosure of Sensitive Information in URIs
URIs are intended to be shared, not secured, even when they identify
secure resources. URIs are often shown on displays, added to
templates when a page is printed, and stored in a variety of
unprotected bookmark lists. Many servers, proxies, and user agents
log or display the target URI in places where it might be visible to
third parties. It is therefore unwise to include information within
a URI that is sensitive, personally identifiable, or a risk to
disclose.
When an application uses client-side mechanisms to construct a target
URI out of user-provided information, such as the query fields of a
form using GET, potentially sensitive data might be provided that
would not be appropriate for disclosure within a URI. POST is often
preferred in such cases because it usually doesn't construct a URI;
instead, POST of a form transmits the potentially sensitive data in
the request content. However, this hinders caching and uses an
unsafe method for what would otherwise be a safe request.
Alternative workarounds include transforming the user-provided data
prior to constructing the URI, or filtering the data to only include
common values that are not sensitive. Likewise, redirecting the
result of a query to a different (server-generated) URI can remove
potentially sensitive data from later links and provide a cacheable
response for later reuse.
Since the Referer header field tells a target site about the context
that resulted in a request, it has the potential to reveal
information about the user's immediate browsing history and any
personal information that might be found in the referring resource's
URI. Limitations on the Referer header field are described in
Section 10.1.3 to address some of its security considerations.
17.10. Application Handling of Field Names
Servers often use non-HTTP gateway interfaces and frameworks to
process a received request and produce content for the response. For
historical reasons, such interfaces often pass received field names
as external variable names, using a name mapping suitable for
environment variables.
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For example, the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) mapping of protocol-
specific meta-variables, defined by Section 4.1.18 of [RFC3875], is
applied to received header fields that do not correspond to one of
CGI's standard variables; the mapping consists of prepending "HTTP_"
to each name and changing all instances of hyphen ("-") to underscore
("_"). This same mapping has been inherited by many other
application frameworks in order to simplify moving applications from
one platform to the next.
In CGI, a received Content-Length field would be passed as the meta-
variable "CONTENT_LENGTH" with a string value matching the received
field's value. In contrast, a received "Content_Length" header field
would be passed as the protocol-specific meta-variable
"HTTP_CONTENT_LENGTH", which might lead to some confusion if an
application mistakenly reads the protocol-specific meta-variable
instead of the default one. (This historical practice is why
Section 16.3.2.1 discourages the creation of new field names that
contain an underscore.)
Unfortunately, mapping field names to different interface names can
lead to security vulnerabilities if the mapping is incomplete or
ambiguous. For example, if an attacker were to send a field named
"Transfer_Encoding", a naive interface might map that to the same
variable name as the "Transfer-Encoding" field, resulting in a
potential request smuggling vulnerability (Section 11.2 of
[HTTP/1.1]).
To mitigate the associated risks, implementations that perform such
mappings are advised to make the mapping unambiguous and complete for
the full range of potential octets received as a name (including
those that are discouraged or forbidden by the HTTP grammar). For
example, a field with an unusual name character might result in the
request being blocked, the specific field being removed, or the name
being passed with a different prefix to distinguish it from other
fields.
17.11. Disclosure of Fragment after Redirects
Although fragment identifiers used within URI references are not sent
in requests, implementers ought to be aware that they will be visible
to the user agent and any extensions or scripts running as a result
of the response. In particular, when a redirect occurs and the
original request's fragment identifier is inherited by the new
reference in Location (Section 10.2.3), this might have the effect of
disclosing one site's fragment to another site. If the first site
uses personal information in fragments, it ought to ensure that
redirects to other sites include a (possibly empty) fragment
component in order to block that inheritance.
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17.12. Disclosure of Product Information
The User-Agent (Section 10.1.6), Via (Section 7.6.3), and Server
(Section 10.2.5) header fields often reveal information about the
respective sender's software systems. In theory, this can make it
easier for an attacker to exploit known security holes; in practice,
attackers tend to try all potential holes regardless of the apparent
software versions being used.
Proxies that serve as a portal through a network firewall ought to
take special precautions regarding the transfer of header information
that might identify hosts behind the firewall. The Via header field
allows intermediaries to replace sensitive machine names with
pseudonyms.
17.13. Browser Fingerprinting
Browser fingerprinting is a set of techniques for identifying a
specific user agent over time through its unique set of
characteristics. These characteristics might include information
related to how it uses the underlying transport protocol, feature
capabilities, and scripting environment, though of particular
interest here is the set of unique characteristics that might be
communicated via HTTP. Fingerprinting is considered a privacy
concern because it enables tracking of a user agent's behavior over
time ([Bujlow]) without the corresponding controls that the user
might have over other forms of data collection (e.g., cookies). Many
general-purpose user agents (i.e., Web browsers) have taken steps to
reduce their fingerprints.
There are a number of request header fields that might reveal
information to servers that is sufficiently unique to enable
fingerprinting. The From header field is the most obvious, though it
is expected that From will only be sent when self-identification is
desired by the user. Likewise, Cookie header fields are deliberately
designed to enable re-identification, so fingerprinting concerns only
apply to situations where cookies are disabled or restricted by the
user agent's configuration.
The User-Agent header field might contain enough information to
uniquely identify a specific device, usually when combined with other
characteristics, particularly if the user agent sends excessive
details about the user's system or extensions. However, the source
of unique information that is least expected by users is proactive
negotiation (Section 12.1), including the Accept, Accept-Charset,
Accept-Encoding, and Accept-Language header fields.
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In addition to the fingerprinting concern, detailed use of the
Accept-Language header field can reveal information the user might
consider to be of a private nature. For example, understanding a
given language set might be strongly correlated to membership in a
particular ethnic group. An approach that limits such loss of
privacy would be for a user agent to omit the sending of Accept-
Language except for sites that have been explicitly permitted,
perhaps via interaction after detecting a Vary header field that
indicates language negotiation might be useful.
In environments where proxies are used to enhance privacy, user
agents ought to be conservative in sending proactive negotiation
header fields. General-purpose user agents that provide a high
degree of header field configurability ought to inform users about
the loss of privacy that might result if too much detail is provided.
As an extreme privacy measure, proxies could filter the proactive
negotiation header fields in relayed requests.
17.14. Validator Retention
The validators defined by this specification are not intended to
ensure the validity of a representation, guard against malicious
changes, or detect on-path attacks. At best, they enable more
efficient cache updates and optimistic concurrent writes when all
participants are behaving nicely. At worst, the conditions will fail
and the client will receive a response that is no more harmful than
an HTTP exchange without conditional requests.
An entity-tag can be abused in ways that create privacy risks. For
example, a site might deliberately construct a semantically invalid
entity-tag that is unique to the user or user agent, send it in a
cacheable response with a long freshness time, and then read that
entity-tag in later conditional requests as a means of re-identifying
that user or user agent. Such an identifying tag would become a
persistent identifier for as long as the user agent retained the
original cache entry. User agents that cache representations ought
to ensure that the cache is cleared or replaced whenever the user
performs privacy-maintaining actions, such as clearing stored cookies
or changing to a private browsing mode.
17.15. Denial-of-Service Attacks Using Range
Unconstrained multiple range requests are susceptible to denial-of-
service attacks because the effort required to request many
overlapping ranges of the same data is tiny compared to the time,
memory, and bandwidth consumed by attempting to serve the requested
data in many parts. Servers ought to ignore, coalesce, or reject
egregious range requests, such as requests for more than two
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overlapping ranges or for many small ranges in a single set,
particularly when the ranges are requested out of order for no
apparent reason. Multipart range requests are not designed to
support random access.
17.16. Authentication Considerations
Everything about the topic of HTTP authentication is a security
consideration, so the list of considerations below is not exhaustive.
Furthermore, it is limited to security considerations regarding the
authentication framework, in general, rather than discussing all of
the potential considerations for specific authentication schemes
(which ought to be documented in the specifications that define those
schemes). Various organizations maintain topical information and
links to current research on Web application security (e.g.,
[OWASP]), including common pitfalls for implementing and using the
authentication schemes found in practice.
17.16.1. Confidentiality of Credentials
The HTTP authentication framework does not define a single mechanism
for maintaining the confidentiality of credentials; instead, each
authentication scheme defines how the credentials are encoded prior
to transmission. While this provides flexibility for the development
of future authentication schemes, it is inadequate for the protection
of existing schemes that provide no confidentiality on their own, or
that do not sufficiently protect against replay attacks.
Furthermore, if the server expects credentials that are specific to
each individual user, the exchange of those credentials will have the
effect of identifying that user even if the content within
credentials remains confidential.
HTTP depends on the security properties of the underlying transport-
or session-level connection to provide confidential transmission of
fields. Services that depend on individual user authentication
require a secured connection prior to exchanging credentials
(Section 4.2.2).
17.16.2. Credentials and Idle Clients
Existing HTTP clients and user agents typically retain authentication
information indefinitely. HTTP does not provide a mechanism for the
origin server to direct clients to discard these cached credentials,
since the protocol has no awareness of how credentials are obtained
or managed by the user agent. The mechanisms for expiring or
revoking credentials can be specified as part of an authentication
scheme definition.
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Circumstances under which credential caching can interfere with the
application's security model include but are not limited to:
o Clients that have been idle for an extended period, following
which the server might wish to cause the client to re-prompt the
user for credentials.
o Applications that include a session termination indication (such
as a "logout" or "commit" button on a page) after which the server
side of the application "knows" that there is no further reason
for the client to retain the credentials.
User agents that cache credentials are encouraged to provide a
readily accessible mechanism for discarding cached credentials under
user control.
17.16.3. Protection Spaces
Authentication schemes that solely rely on the "realm" mechanism for
establishing a protection space will expose credentials to all
resources on an origin server. Clients that have successfully made
authenticated requests with a resource can use the same
authentication credentials for other resources on the same origin
server. This makes it possible for a different resource to harvest
authentication credentials for other resources.
This is of particular concern when an origin server hosts resources
for multiple parties under the same origin (Section 11.5). Possible
mitigation strategies include restricting direct access to
authentication credentials (i.e., not making the content of the
Authorization request header field available), and separating
protection spaces by using a different host name (or port number) for
each party.
17.16.4. Additional Response Fields
Adding information to responses that are sent over an unencrypted
channel can affect security and privacy. The presence of the
Authentication-Info and Proxy-Authentication-Info header fields alone
indicates that HTTP authentication is in use. Additional information
could be exposed by the contents of the authentication-scheme
specific parameters; this will have to be considered in the
definitions of these schemes.
18. IANA Considerations
The change controller for the following registrations is: "IETF
(iesg@ietf.org) - Internet Engineering Task Force".
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18.1. URI Scheme Registration
Please update the registry of URI Schemes [BCP35] at
with the permanent
schemes listed in the table in Section 4.2.
18.2. Method Registration
Please update the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Method
Registry" at with the
registration procedure of Section 16.1.1 and the method names
summarized in the following table.
+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Method | Safe | Idempotent | Ref. |
+---------+------+------------+-------+
| CONNECT | no | no | 9.3.6 |
| DELETE | no | yes | 9.3.5 |
| GET | yes | yes | 9.3.1 |
| HEAD | yes | yes | 9.3.2 |
| OPTIONS | yes | yes | 9.3.7 |
| POST | no | no | 9.3.3 |
| PUT | no | yes | 9.3.4 |
| TRACE | yes | yes | 9.3.8 |
| * | no | no | 18.2 |
+---------+------+------------+-------+
Table 7
The method name "*" is reserved, since using "*" as a method name
would conflict with its usage as a wildcard in some fields (e.g.,
"Access-Control-Request-Method").
18.3. Status Code Registration
Please update the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code
Registry" at
with the registration procedure of Section 16.2.1 and the status code
values summarized in the following table.
+-------+-------------------------------+---------+
| Value | Description | Ref. |
+-------+-------------------------------+---------+
| 100 | Continue | 15.2.1 |
| 101 | Switching Protocols | 15.2.2 |
| 200 | OK | 15.3.1 |
| 201 | Created | 15.3.2 |
| 202 | Accepted | 15.3.3 |
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| 203 | Non-Authoritative Information | 15.3.4 |
| 204 | No Content | 15.3.5 |
| 205 | Reset Content | 15.3.6 |
| 206 | Partial Content | 15.3.7 |
| 300 | Multiple Choices | 15.4.1 |
| 301 | Moved Permanently | 15.4.2 |
| 302 | Found | 15.4.3 |
| 303 | See Other | 15.4.4 |
| 304 | Not Modified | 15.4.5 |
| 305 | Use Proxy | 15.4.6 |
| 306 | (Unused) | 15.4.7 |
| 307 | Temporary Redirect | 15.4.8 |
| 308 | Permanent Redirect | 15.4.9 |
| 400 | Bad Request | 15.5.1 |
| 401 | Unauthorized | 15.5.2 |
| 402 | Payment Required | 15.5.3 |
| 403 | Forbidden | 15.5.4 |
| 404 | Not Found | 15.5.5 |
| 405 | Method Not Allowed | 15.5.6 |
| 406 | Not Acceptable | 15.5.7 |
| 407 | Proxy Authentication Required | 15.5.8 |
| 408 | Request Timeout | 15.5.9 |
| 409 | Conflict | 15.5.10 |
| 410 | Gone | 15.5.11 |
| 411 | Length Required | 15.5.12 |
| 412 | Precondition Failed | 15.5.13 |
| 413 | Content Too Large | 15.5.14 |
| 414 | URI Too Long | 15.5.15 |
| 415 | Unsupported Media Type | 15.5.16 |
| 416 | Range Not Satisfiable | 15.5.17 |
| 417 | Expectation Failed | 15.5.18 |
| 418 | (Unused) | 15.5.19 |
| 421 | Misdirected Request | 15.5.20 |
| 422 | Unprocessable Content | 15.5.21 |
| 426 | Upgrade Required | 15.5.22 |
| 500 | Internal Server Error | 15.6.1 |
| 501 | Not Implemented | 15.6.2 |
| 502 | Bad Gateway | 15.6.3 |
| 503 | Service Unavailable | 15.6.4 |
| 504 | Gateway Timeout | 15.6.5 |
| 505 | HTTP Version Not Supported | 15.6.6 |
+-------+-------------------------------+---------+
Table 8
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18.4. Field Name Registration
This specification updates the HTTP related aspects of the existing
registration procedures for message header fields defined in
[RFC3864]. It defines both a new registration procedure and moves
HTTP field definitions into a separate registry.
Please create a new registry as outlined in Section 16.3.1.
After creating the registry, all entries in the Permanent and
Provisional Message Header Registries with the protocol 'http' are to
be moved to it, with the following changes applied:
1. The 'Applicable Protocol' field is to be omitted.
2. Entries with a status of 'standard', 'experimental', 'reserved',
or 'informational' are to have a status of 'permanent'.
3. Provisional entries without a status are to have a status of
'provisional'.
4. Permanent entries without a status (after confirmation that the
registration document did not define one) will have a status of
'provisional'. The Expert(s) can choose to update their status
if there is evidence that another is more appropriate.
Please annotate the Permanent and Provisional Message Header
registries to indicate that HTTP field name registrations have moved,
with an appropriate link.
After that is complete, please update the new registry with the field
names listed in the following table.
+---------------------------+------------+--------+------------+
| Field Name | Status | Ref. | Comments |
+---------------------------+------------+--------+------------+
| Accept | standard | 12.5.1 | |
| Accept-Charset | deprecated | 12.5.2 | |
| Accept-Encoding | standard | 12.5.3 | |
| Accept-Language | standard | 12.5.4 | |
| Accept-Ranges | standard | 14.3 | |
| Allow | standard | 10.2.1 | |
| Authentication-Info | standard | 11.6.3 | |
| Authorization | standard | 11.6.2 | |
| Connection | standard | 7.6.1 | |
| Content-Encoding | standard | 8.4 | |
| Content-Language | standard | 8.5 | |
| Content-Length | standard | 8.6 | |
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| Content-Location | standard | 8.7 | |
| Content-Range | standard | 14.4 | |
| Content-Type | standard | 8.3 | |
| Date | standard | 10.2.2 | |
| ETag | standard | 8.8.3 | |
| Expect | standard | 10.1.1 | |
| From | standard | 10.1.2 | |
| Host | standard | 7.2 | |
| If-Match | standard | 13.1.1 | |
| If-Modified-Since | standard | 13.1.3 | |
| If-None-Match | standard | 13.1.2 | |
| If-Range | standard | 13.1.5 | |
| If-Unmodified-Since | standard | 13.1.4 | |
| Last-Modified | standard | 8.8.2 | |
| Location | standard | 10.2.3 | |
| Max-Forwards | standard | 7.6.2 | |
| Proxy-Authenticate | standard | 11.7.1 | |
| Proxy-Authentication-Info | standard | 11.7.3 | |
| Proxy-Authorization | standard | 11.7.2 | |
| Range | standard | 14.2 | |
| Referer | standard | 10.1.3 | |
| Retry-After | standard | 10.2.4 | |
| Server | standard | 10.2.5 | |
| TE | standard | 10.1.4 | |
| Trailer | standard | 10.1.5 | |
| Upgrade | standard | 7.8 | |
| User-Agent | standard | 10.1.6 | |
| Vary | standard | 12.5.5 | |
| Via | standard | 7.6.3 | |
| WWW-Authenticate | standard | 11.6.1 | |
| * | standard | 12.5.5 | (reserved) |
+---------------------------+------------+--------+------------+
Table 9
The field name "*" is reserved, since using that name as an HTTP
header field might conflict with its special semantics in the Vary
header field (Section 12.5.5).
Finally, please update the "Content-MD5" entry in the new registry to
have a status of 'obsoleted' with references to Section 14.15 of
[RFC2616] (for the definition of the header field) and Appendix B of
[RFC7231] (which removed the field definition from the updated
specification).
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18.5. Authentication Scheme Registration
Please update the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Authentication
Scheme Registry" at with the registration procedure of Section 16.4.1. No
authentication schemes are defined in this document.
18.6. Content Coding Registration
Please update the "HTTP Content Coding Registry" at
with the
registration procedure of Section 16.6.1 and the content coding names
summarized in the table below.
+------------+-------------------------------------------+---------+
| Name | Description | Ref. |
+------------+-------------------------------------------+---------+
| compress | UNIX "compress" data format [Welch] | 8.4.1.1 |
| deflate | "deflate" compressed data ([RFC1951]) | 8.4.1.2 |
| | inside the "zlib" data format ([RFC1950]) | |
| gzip | GZIP file format [RFC1952] | 8.4.1.3 |
| identity | Reserved | 12.5.3 |
| x-compress | Deprecated (alias for compress) | 8.4.1.1 |
| x-gzip | Deprecated (alias for gzip) | 8.4.1.3 |
+------------+-------------------------------------------+---------+
Table 10
18.7. Range Unit Registration
Please update the "HTTP Range Unit Registry" at
with the
registration procedure of Section 16.5.1 and the range unit names
summarized in the table below.
+-----------------+----------------------------------+--------+
| Range Unit Name | Description | Ref. |
+-----------------+----------------------------------+--------+
| bytes | a range of octets | 14.1.2 |
| none | reserved as keyword to indicate | 14.3 |
| | range requests are not supported | |
+-----------------+----------------------------------+--------+
Table 11
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18.8. Media Type Registration
Please update the "Media Types" registry at
with the registration
information in Section 14.6 for the media type "multipart/
byteranges".
18.9. Port Registration
Please update the "Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number"
registry at for the services on ports 80 and 443 that use UDP or TCP
to:
1. use this document as "Reference", and
2. when currently unspecified, set "Assignee" to "IESG" and
"Contact" to "IETF_Chair".
18.10. Upgrade Token Registration
Please update the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Upgrade Token
Registry" at
with the registration procedure of Section 16.7 and the upgrade token
names summarized in the following table.
+------+-------------------+-------------------------+------+
| Name | Description | Expected Version Tokens | Ref. |
+------+-------------------+-------------------------+------+
| HTTP | Hypertext | any DIGIT.DIGIT (e.g, | 2.5 |
| | Transfer Protocol | "2.0") | |
+------+-------------------+-------------------------+------+
Table 12
19. References
19.1. Normative References
[CACHING] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "HTTP Caching", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-httpbis-cache-latest, July 2021,
.
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[RFC1950] Deutsch, L.P. and J-L. Gailly, "ZLIB Compressed Data
Format Specification version 3.3", RFC 1950,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1950, May 1996,
.
[RFC1951] Deutsch, P., "DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification
version 1.3", RFC 1951, DOI 10.17487/RFC1951, May 1996,
.
[RFC1952] Deutsch, P., Gailly, J-L., Adler, M., Deutsch, L.P., and
G. Randers-Pehrson, "GZIP file format specification
version 4.3", RFC 1952, DOI 10.17487/RFC1952, May 1996,
.
[RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2046, November 1996,
.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
.
[RFC4647] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Matching of Language
Tags", BCP 47, RFC 4647, DOI 10.17487/RFC4647, September
2006, .
[RFC4648] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
Encodings", RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC4648, October 2006,
.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
.
[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
(CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
.
[RFC5646] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Tags for Identifying
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 5646, DOI 10.17487/RFC5646,
September 2009, .
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[RFC6125] Saint-Andre, P. and J. Hodges, "Representation and
Verification of Domain-Based Application Service Identity
within Internet Public Key Infrastructure Using X.509
(PKIX) Certificates in the Context of Transport Layer
Security (TLS)", RFC 6125, DOI 10.17487/RFC6125, March
2011, .
[RFC6365] Hoffman, P. and J. Klensin, "Terminology Used in
Internationalization in the IETF", BCP 166, RFC 6365,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6365, September 2011,
.
[RFC7405] Kyzivat, P., "Case-Sensitive String Support in ABNF",
RFC 7405, DOI 10.17487/RFC7405, December 2014,
.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, .
[TCP] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981,
.
[TLS13] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
.
[URI] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
.
[USASCII] American National Standards Institute, "Coded Character
Set -- 7-bit American Standard Code for Information
Interchange", ANSI X3.4, 1986.
[Welch] Welch, T. A., "A Technique for High-Performance Data
Compression", IEEE Computer 17(6),
DOI 10.1109/MC.1984.1659158, June 1984,
.
19.2. Informative References
[ALTSVC] Nottingham, M., McManus, P., and J. Reschke, "HTTP
Alternative Services", RFC 7838, DOI 10.17487/RFC7838,
April 2016, .
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[BCP13] Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13,
RFC 6838, January 2013,
.
[BCP178] Saint-Andre, P., Crocker, D., and M. Nottingham,
"Deprecating the "X-" Prefix and Similar Constructs in
Application Protocols", BCP 178, RFC 6648, June 2012,
.
[BCP35] Thaler, D., Ed., Hansen, T., and T. Hardie, "Guidelines
and Registration Procedures for URI Schemes", BCP 35,
RFC 7595, June 2015,
.
[BREACH] Gluck, Y., Harris, N., and A. Prado, "BREACH: Reviving the
CRIME Attack", July 2013,
.
[Bujlow] Bujlow, T., Carela-Espanol, V., Sole-Pareta, J., and P.
Barlet-Ros, "A Survey on Web Tracking: Mechanisms,
Implications, and Defenses",
DOI 10.1109/JPROC.2016.2637878, Proceedings of the
IEEE 105(8), August 2017,
.
[COOKIE] Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6265, April 2011,
.
[Err1912] RFC Errata, Erratum ID 1912, RFC 2978,
.
[Err5433] RFC Errata, Erratum ID 5433, RFC 2978,
.
[Georgiev] Georgiev, M., Iyengar, S., Jana, S., Anubhai, R., Boneh,
D., and V. Shmatikov, "The Most Dangerous Code in the
World: Validating SSL Certificates in Non-browser
Software", In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on
Computer and Communications Security (CCS '12), pp. 38-49,
DOI 10.1145/2382196.2382204, October 2012,
.
[HPACK] Peon, R. and H. Ruellan, "HPACK: Header Compression for
HTTP/2", RFC 7541, DOI 10.17487/RFC7541, May 2015,
.
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[HTTP/1.0] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R.T., and H.F. Nielsen,
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1945, May 1996,
.
[HTTP/1.1] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "HTTP/1.1", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-httpbis-messaging-latest, July 2021,
.
[HTTP/2] Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015,
.
[HTTP/3] Bishop, M., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 3
(HTTP/3)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
quic-http-34, February 2, 2021,
.
[ISO-8859-1]
International Organization for Standardization,
"Information technology -- 8-bit single-byte coded graphic
character sets -- Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1", ISO/
IEC 8859-1:1998, 1998.
[Kri2001] Kristol, D., "HTTP Cookies: Standards, Privacy, and
Politics", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology 1(2),
November 2001, .
[OWASP] van der Stock, A., Ed., "A Guide to Building Secure Web
Applications and Web Services", The Open Web Application
Security Project (OWASP) 2.0.1, July 27, 2005,
.
[REST] Fielding, R.T., "Architectural Styles and the Design of
Network-based Software Architectures", Doctoral
Dissertation, University of California, Irvine, September
2000, .
[RFC1919] Chatel, M., "Classical versus Transparent IP Proxies",
RFC 1919, DOI 10.17487/RFC1919, March 1996,
.
Fielding, et al. Expires January 27, 2022 [Page 202]
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[RFC2047] Moore, K., "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text",
RFC 2047, DOI 10.17487/RFC2047, November 1996,
.
[RFC2068] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Nielsen, H., and T.
Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1",
RFC 2068, DOI 10.17487/RFC2068, January 1997,
.
[RFC2145] Mogul, J.C., Fielding, R.T., Gettys, J., and H.F. Nielsen,
"Use and Interpretation of HTTP Version Numbers",
RFC 2145, DOI 10.17487/RFC2145, May 1997,
.
[RFC2295] Holtman, K. and A.H. Mutz, "Transparent Content
Negotiation in HTTP", RFC 2295, DOI 10.17487/RFC2295,
March 1998, .
[RFC2324] Masinter, L., "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
(HTCPCP/1.0)", RFC 2324, DOI 10.17487/RFC2324, April 1,
1998, .
[RFC2557] Palme, F., Hopmann, A., Shelness, N., and E. Stefferud,
"MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML
(MHTML)", RFC 2557, DOI 10.17487/RFC2557, March 1999,
.
[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,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2616, June 1999,
.
[RFC2617] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P.M., Hostetler, J.L., Lawrence,
S.D., Leach, P.J., Luotonen, A., and L. Stewart, "HTTP
Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication",
RFC 2617, DOI 10.17487/RFC2617, June 1999,
.
[RFC2774] Frystyk, H., Leach, P., and S. Lawrence, "An HTTP
Extension Framework", RFC 2774, DOI 10.17487/RFC2774,
February 2000, .
[RFC2818] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2818, May 2000,
.
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[RFC2978] Freed, N. and J. Postel, "IANA Charset Registration
Procedures", BCP 19, RFC 2978, DOI 10.17487/RFC2978,
October 2000, .
[RFC3040] Cooper, I., Melve, I., and G. Tomlinson, "Internet Web
Replication and Caching Taxonomy", RFC 3040,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3040, January 2001,
.
[RFC3864] Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration
Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3864, September 2004,
.
[RFC3875] Robinson, D. and K. Coar, "The Common Gateway Interface
(CGI) Version 1.1", RFC 3875, DOI 10.17487/RFC3875,
October 2004, .
[RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
RFC 4033, DOI 10.17487/RFC4033, March 2005,
.
[RFC4559] Jaganathan, K., Zhu, L., and J. Brezak, "SPNEGO-based
Kerberos and NTLM HTTP Authentication in Microsoft
Windows", RFC 4559, DOI 10.17487/RFC4559, June 2006,
.
[RFC5322] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5322, October 2008,
.
[RFC5789] Dusseault, L. and J. Snell, "PATCH Method for HTTP",
RFC 5789, DOI 10.17487/RFC5789, March 2010,
.
[RFC5905] Mills, D., Martin, J., Ed., Burbank, J., and W. Kasch,
"Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms
Specification", RFC 5905, DOI 10.17487/RFC5905, June 2010,
.
[RFC6454] Barth, A., "The Web Origin Concept", RFC 6454,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6454, December 2011,
.
[RFC6585] Nottingham, M. and R. Fielding, "Additional HTTP Status
Codes", RFC 6585, DOI 10.17487/RFC6585, April 2012,
.
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[RFC7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. F. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
.
[RFC7231] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. F. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content",
RFC 7231, DOI 10.17487/RFC7231, June 2014,
.
[RFC7232] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. F. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Conditional Requests",
RFC 7232, DOI 10.17487/RFC7232, June 2014,
.
[RFC7233] Fielding, R., Ed., Lafon, Y., Ed., and J. F. Reschke, Ed.,
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Range Requests",
RFC 7233, DOI 10.17487/RFC7233, June 2014,
.
[RFC7234] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. F. Reschke,
Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): Caching",
RFC 7234, DOI 10.17487/RFC7234, June 2014,
.
[RFC7235] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. F. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Authentication", RFC 7235,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7235, June 2014,
.
[RFC7538] Reschke, J. F., "The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Status
Code 308 (Permanent Redirect)", RFC 7538,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7538, April 2015,
.
[RFC7578] Masinter, L., "Returning Values from Forms: multipart/
form-data", RFC 7578, DOI 10.17487/RFC7578, July 2015,
.
[RFC7615] Reschke, J. F., "HTTP Authentication-Info and Proxy-
Authentication-Info Response Header Fields", RFC 7615,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7615, September 2015,
.
[RFC7616] Shekh-Yusef, R., Ed., Ahrens, D., and S. Bremer, "HTTP
Digest Access Authentication", RFC 7616,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7616, September 2015,
.
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[RFC7617] Reschke, J. F., "The 'Basic' HTTP Authentication Scheme",
RFC 7617, DOI 10.17487/RFC7617, September 2015,
.
[RFC7694] Reschke, J. F., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Client-Initiated Content-Encoding", RFC 7694,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7694, November 2015,
.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
.
[RFC8187] Reschke, J. F., "Indicating Character Encoding and
Language for HTTP Header Field Parameters", RFC 8187,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8187, September 2017,
.
[RFC8246] McManus, P., "HTTP Immutable Responses", RFC 8246,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8246, September 2017,
.
[RFC8288] Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 8288,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8288, October 2017,
.
[RFC8336] Nottingham, M. and E. Nygren, "The ORIGIN HTTP/2 Frame",
RFC 8336, DOI 10.17487/RFC8336, March 2018,
.
[RFC8615] Nottingham, M., "Well-Known Uniform Resource Identifiers
(URIs)", RFC 8615, DOI 10.17487/RFC8615, May 2019,
.
[RFC8941] Nottingham, M. and P-H. Kamp, "Structured Field Values for
HTTP", RFC 8941, DOI 10.17487/RFC8941, February 2021,
.
[Sniffing] WHATWG, "MIME Sniffing",
.
[WEBDAV] Dusseault, L.M., Ed., "HTTP Extensions for Web Distributed
Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV)", RFC 4918,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4918, June 2007,
.
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Appendix A. Collected ABNF
In the collected ABNF below, list rules are expanded as per
Section 5.6.1.1.
Accept = [ ( media-range [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS ( media-range [
weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Charset = [ ( ( token / "*" ) [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS ( (
token / "*" ) [ weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Encoding = [ ( codings [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS ( codings [
weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Language = [ ( language-range [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS (
language-range [ weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Ranges = acceptable-ranges
Allow = [ method *( OWS "," OWS method ) ]
Authentication-Info = [ auth-param *( OWS "," OWS auth-param ) ]
Authorization = credentials
BWS = OWS
Connection = [ connection-option *( OWS "," OWS connection-option )
]
Content-Encoding = [ content-coding *( OWS "," OWS content-coding )
]
Content-Language = [ language-tag *( OWS "," OWS language-tag ) ]
Content-Length = 1*DIGIT
Content-Location = absolute-URI / partial-URI
Content-Range = range-unit SP ( range-resp / unsatisfied-range )
Content-Type = media-type
Date = HTTP-date
ETag = entity-tag
Expect = [ expectation *( OWS "," OWS expectation ) ]
From = mailbox
GMT = %x47.4D.54 ; GMT
HTTP-date = IMF-fixdate / obs-date
Host = uri-host [ ":" port ]
IMF-fixdate = day-name "," SP date1 SP time-of-day SP GMT
If-Match = "*" / [ entity-tag *( OWS "," OWS entity-tag ) ]
If-Modified-Since = HTTP-date
If-None-Match = "*" / [ entity-tag *( OWS "," OWS entity-tag ) ]
If-Range = entity-tag / HTTP-date
If-Unmodified-Since = HTTP-date
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Last-Modified = HTTP-date
Location = URI-reference
Max-Forwards = 1*DIGIT
OWS = *( SP / HTAB )
Proxy-Authenticate = [ challenge *( OWS "," OWS challenge ) ]
Proxy-Authentication-Info = [ auth-param *( OWS "," OWS auth-param )
]
Proxy-Authorization = credentials
RWS = 1*( SP / HTAB )
Range = ranges-specifier
Referer = absolute-URI / partial-URI
Retry-After = HTTP-date / delay-seconds
Server = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )
TE = [ t-codings *( OWS "," OWS t-codings ) ]
Trailer = [ field-name *( OWS "," OWS field-name ) ]
URI-reference =
Upgrade = [ protocol *( OWS "," OWS protocol ) ]
User-Agent = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )
Vary = [ ( "*" / field-name ) *( OWS "," OWS ( "*" / field-name ) )
]
Via = [ ( received-protocol RWS received-by [ RWS comment ] ) *( OWS
"," OWS ( received-protocol RWS received-by [ RWS comment ] ) ) ]
WWW-Authenticate = [ challenge *( OWS "," OWS challenge ) ]
absolute-URI =
absolute-path = 1*( "/" segment )
acceptable-ranges = range-unit *( OWS "," OWS range-unit )
asctime-date = day-name SP date3 SP time-of-day SP year
auth-param = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )
auth-scheme = token
authority =
challenge = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / [ auth-param *( OWS ","
OWS auth-param ) ] ) ]
codings = content-coding / "identity" / "*"
comment = "(" *( ctext / quoted-pair / comment ) ")"
complete-length = 1*DIGIT
connection-option = token
content-coding = token
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credentials = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / [ auth-param *( OWS ","
OWS auth-param ) ] ) ]
ctext = HTAB / SP / %x21-27 ; '!'-'''
/ %x2A-5B ; '*'-'['
/ %x5D-7E ; ']'-'~'
/ obs-text
date1 = day SP month SP year
date2 = day "-" month "-" 2DIGIT
date3 = month SP ( 2DIGIT / ( SP DIGIT ) )
day = 2DIGIT
day-name = %x4D.6F.6E ; Mon
/ %x54.75.65 ; Tue
/ %x57.65.64 ; Wed
/ %x54.68.75 ; Thu
/ %x46.72.69 ; Fri
/ %x53.61.74 ; Sat
/ %x53.75.6E ; Sun
day-name-l = %x4D.6F.6E.64.61.79 ; Monday
/ %x54.75.65.73.64.61.79 ; Tuesday
/ %x57.65.64.6E.65.73.64.61.79 ; Wednesday
/ %x54.68.75.72.73.64.61.79 ; Thursday
/ %x46.72.69.64.61.79 ; Friday
/ %x53.61.74.75.72.64.61.79 ; Saturday
/ %x53.75.6E.64.61.79 ; Sunday
delay-seconds = 1*DIGIT
entity-tag = [ weak ] opaque-tag
etagc = "!" / %x23-7E ; '#'-'~'
/ obs-text
expectation = token [ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) parameters ]
field-content = field-vchar [ 1*( SP / HTAB / field-vchar )
field-vchar ]
field-name = token
field-value = *field-content
field-vchar = VCHAR / obs-text
first-pos = 1*DIGIT
hour = 2DIGIT
http-URI = "http://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]
https-URI = "https://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]
incl-range = first-pos "-" last-pos
int-range = first-pos "-" [ last-pos ]
language-range =
language-tag =
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last-pos = 1*DIGIT
mailbox =
media-range = ( "*/*" / ( type "/*" ) / ( type "/" subtype ) )
parameters
media-type = type "/" subtype parameters
method = token
minute = 2DIGIT
month = %x4A.61.6E ; Jan
/ %x46.65.62 ; Feb
/ %x4D.61.72 ; Mar
/ %x41.70.72 ; Apr
/ %x4D.61.79 ; May
/ %x4A.75.6E ; Jun
/ %x4A.75.6C ; Jul
/ %x41.75.67 ; Aug
/ %x53.65.70 ; Sep
/ %x4F.63.74 ; Oct
/ %x4E.6F.76 ; Nov
/ %x44.65.63 ; Dec
obs-date = rfc850-date / asctime-date
obs-text = %x80-FF
opaque-tag = DQUOTE *etagc DQUOTE
other-range = 1*( %x21-2B ; '!'-'+'
/ %x2D-7E ; '-'-'~'
)
parameter = parameter-name "=" parameter-value
parameter-name = token
parameter-value = ( token / quoted-string )
parameters = *( OWS ";" OWS [ parameter ] )
partial-URI = relative-part [ "?" query ]
path-abempty =
port =
product = token [ "/" product-version ]
product-version = token
protocol = protocol-name [ "/" protocol-version ]
protocol-name = token
protocol-version = token
pseudonym = token
qdtext = HTAB / SP / "!" / %x23-5B ; '#'-'['
/ %x5D-7E ; ']'-'~'
/ obs-text
query =
quoted-pair = "\" ( HTAB / SP / VCHAR / obs-text )
quoted-string = DQUOTE *( qdtext / quoted-pair ) DQUOTE
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qvalue = ( "0" [ "." *3DIGIT ] ) / ( "1" [ "." *3"0" ] )
range-resp = incl-range "/" ( complete-length / "*" )
range-set = range-spec *( OWS "," OWS range-spec )
range-spec = int-range / suffix-range / other-range
range-unit = token
ranges-specifier = range-unit "=" range-set
received-by = pseudonym [ ":" port ]
received-protocol = [ protocol-name "/" ] protocol-version
relative-part =
rfc850-date = day-name-l "," SP date2 SP time-of-day SP GMT
second = 2DIGIT
segment =
subtype = token
suffix-length = 1*DIGIT
suffix-range = "-" suffix-length
t-codings = "trailers" / ( transfer-coding [ weight ] )
tchar = "!" / "#" / "$" / "%" / "&" / "'" / "*" / "+" / "-" / "." /
"^" / "_" / "`" / "|" / "~" / DIGIT / ALPHA
time-of-day = hour ":" minute ":" second
token = 1*tchar
token68 = 1*( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~" / "+" / "/" )
*"="
transfer-coding = token *( OWS ";" OWS transfer-parameter )
transfer-parameter = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )
type = token
unsatisfied-range = "*/" complete-length
uri-host =
weak = %x57.2F ; W/
weight = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue
year = 4DIGIT
Appendix B. Changes from previous RFCs
B.1. Changes from RFC 2818
None.
B.2. Changes from RFC 7230
The sections introducing HTTP's design goals, history, architecture,
conformance criteria, protocol versioning, URIs, message routing, and
header fields have been moved here.
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The requirement on semantic conformance has been replaced with
permission to ignore/workaround implementation-specific failures.
(Section 2.2)
The description of an origin and authoritative access to origin
servers has been extended for both "http" and "https" URIs to account
for alternative services and secured connections that are not
necessarily based on TCP. (Section 4.2.1, Section 4.2.2,
Section 4.3.1, Section 7.3.3)
Explicit requirements have been added to check the target URI
scheme's semantics and reject requests that don't meet any associated
requirements. (Section 7.4)
Parameters in media type, media range, and expectation can be empty
via one or more trailing semicolons. (Section 5.6.6)
"Field value" now refers to the value after multiple field lines are
combined with commas -- by far the most common use. To refer to a
single header line's value, use "field line value". (Section 6.3)
Trailer field semantics now transcend the specifics of chunked
encoding. Use of trailer fields has been further limited to only
allow generation as a trailer field when the sender knows the field
defines that usage and to only allow merging into the header section
if the recipient knows the corresponding field definition permits and
defines how to merge. In all other cases, implementations are
encouraged to either store the trailer fields separately or discard
them instead of merging. (Section 6.5.1)
Made the priority of the absolute form of the request URI over the
Host header by origin servers explicit, to align with proxy handling.
(Section 7.2)
The grammar definition for the Via field's "received-by" was expanded
in 7230 due to changes in the URI grammar for host [URI] that are not
desirable for Via. For simplicity, we have removed uri-host from the
received-by production because it can be encompassed by the existing
grammar for pseudonym. In particular, this change removed comma from
the allowed set of charaters for a host name in received-by.
(Section 7.6.3)
B.3. Changes from RFC 7231
Minimum URI lengths to be supported by implementations are now
recommended. (Section 3.1)
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Clarified that CR and NUL in field values are to be rejected or
mapped to SP and that leading and trailing whitespace need to be
stripped from field values before they are consumed. (Section 5.5)
Parameters in media type, media range, and expectation can be empty
via one or more trailing semicolons. (Section 5.6.6)
An abstract data type for HTTP messages has been introduced to define
the components of a message and their semantics as an abstraction
across multiple HTTP versions, rather than in terms of the specific
syntax form of HTTP/1.1 in [HTTP/1.1], and reflect the contents after
the message is parsed. This makes it easier to distinguish between
requirements on the content (what is conveyed) versus requirements on
the messaging syntax (how it is conveyed) and avoids baking
limitations of early protocol versions into the future of HTTP.
(Section 6)
The terms "payload" and "payload body" have been replaced with
"content", to better align with its usage elsewhere (e.g., in field
names) and to avoid confusion with frame payloads in HTTP/2 and
HTTP/3. (Section 6.4)
The term "effective request URI" has been replaced with "target URI".
(Section 7.1)
Restrictions on client retries have been loosened, to reflect
implementation behavior. (Section 9.2.2)
Clarified that request bodies on GET, HEAD, and DELETE are not
interoperable. (Section 9.3.1, Section 9.3.2, Section 9.3.5)
Allowed use of the Content-Range header field (Section 14.4) as a
request modifier on PUT. (Section 9.3.4)
Removed a superfluous requirement about setting Content-Length from
the description of the OPTIONS method. (Section 9.3.7)
Removed normative requirement to use the "message/http" media type in
TRACE responses. (Section 9.3.8)
Restore list-based grammar for Expect for compatibility with RFC
2616. (Section 10.1.1)
Allow Accept and Accept-Encoding in response messages; the latter was
introduced by [RFC7694]. (Section 12.3)
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"Accept Parameters" (accept-params and accept-ext ABNF production)
have been removed from the definition of the Accept field.
(Section 12.5.1)
The "Accept-Charset" field now is deprecated. (Section 12.5.2)
The semantics of "*" in the Vary header field when other values are
present was clarified. (Section 12.5.5)
Range units are compared in a case insensitive fashion.
(Section 14.1)
Use of "Accept-Ranges" is not restricted to origin servers.
(Section 14.3)
The process of creating a redirected request has been clarified.
(Section 15.4)
Added status code 308 (previously defined in [RFC7538]) so that it's
defined closer to status codes 301, 302, and 307. (Section 15.4.9)
Added status code 421 (previously defined in Section 9.1.2 of
[HTTP/2]) because of its general applicability. 421 is no longer
defined as heuristically cacheable, since the response is specific to
the connection (not the target resource). (Section 15.5.20)
Added status code 422 (previously defined in Section 11.2 of
[WEBDAV]) because of its general applicability. (Section 15.5.21)
B.4. Changes from RFC 7232
Previous revisions of HTTP imposed an arbitrary 60-second limit on
the determination of whether Last-Modified was a strong validator to
guard against the possibility that the Date and Last-Modified values
are generated from different clocks or at somewhat different times
during the preparation of the response. This specification has
relaxed that to allow reasonable discretion. (Section 8.8.2.2)
Removed edge case requirement on If-Match and If-Unmodified-Since
that a validator not be sent in a 2xx response when validation fails
and the server decides that the same change request has already been
applied. (Section 13.1.1 and Section 13.1.4)
Clarified that If-Unmodified-Since doesn't apply to a resource
without a concept of modification time. (Section 13.1.4)
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Preconditions can now be evaluated before the request content is
processed rather than waiting until the response would otherwise be
successful. (Section 13.2)
B.5. Changes from RFC 7233
Refactored the range-unit and ranges-specifier grammars to simplify
and reduce artificial distinctions between bytes and other
(extension) range units, removing the overlapping grammar of other-
range-unit by defining range units generically as a token and placing
extensions within the scope of a range-spec (other-range). This
disambiguates the role of list syntax (commas) in all range sets,
including extension range units, for indicating a range-set of more
than one range. Moving the extension grammar into range specifiers
also allows protocol specific to byte ranges to be specified
separately.
It is now possible to define Range handling on extension methods.
(Section 14.2)
Described use of the Content-Range header field (Section 14.4) as a
request modifier to perform a partial PUT. (Section 14.5)
B.6. Changes from RFC 7235
None.
B.7. Changes from RFC 7538
None.
B.8. Changes from RFC 7615
None.
B.9. Changes from RFC 7694
This specification includes the extension defined in [RFC7694], but
leaves out examples and deployment considerations.
Appendix C. Change Log
This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
C.1. Between RFC723x and draft 00
The changes were purely editorial:
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o Change boilerplate and abstract to indicate the "draft" status,
and update references to ancestor specifications.
o Remove version "1.1" from document title, indicating that this
specification applies to all HTTP versions.
o Adjust historical notes.
o Update links to sibling specifications.
o Replace sections listing changes from RFC 2616 by new empty
sections referring to RFC 723x.
o Remove acknowledgements specific to RFC 723x.
o Move "Acknowledgements" to the very end and make them unnumbered.
C.2. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-00
The changes in this draft are editorial, with respect to HTTP as a
whole, to merge core HTTP semantics into this document:
o Merged introduction, architecture, conformance, and ABNF
extensions from RFC 7230 (Messaging).
o Rearranged architecture to extract conformance, http(s) schemes,
and protocol versioning into a separate major section.
o Moved discussion of MIME differences to [HTTP/1.1] since that is
primarily concerned with transforming 1.1 messages.
o Merged entire content of RFC 7232 (Conditional Requests).
o Merged entire content of RFC 7233 (Range Requests).
o Merged entire content of RFC 7235 (Auth Framework).
o Moved all extensibility tips, registration procedures, and
registry tables from the IANA considerations to normative
sections, reducing the IANA considerations to just instructions
that will be removed prior to publication as an RFC.
C.3. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-01
o Improve [Welch] citation ()
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o Remove HTTP/1.1-ism about Range Requests
()
o Cite RFC 8126 instead of RFC 5226 ()
o Cite RFC 7538 instead of RFC 7238 ()
o Cite RFC 8288 instead of RFC 5988 ()
o Cite RFC 8187 instead of RFC 5987 ()
o Cite RFC 7578 instead of RFC 2388 ()
o Cite RFC 7595 instead of RFC 4395 ()
o improve ABNF readability for qdtext (, )
o Clarify "resource" vs "representation" in definition of status
code 416 (,
)
o Resolved erratum 4072, no change needed here
(,
)
o Clarify DELETE status code suggestions
(,
)
o In Section 14.4, fix ABNF for "other-range-resp" to use VCHAR
instead of CHAR (,
)
o Resolved erratum 5162, no change needed here
(,
)
o Replace "response code" with "response status code" and "status-
code" (the ABNF production name from the HTTP/1.1 message format)
by "status code" (,
)
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o Added a missing word in Section 15.4 (, )
o In Section 5.6.1, fixed an example that had trailing whitespace
where it shouldn't (, )
o In Section 15.3.7, remove words that were potentially misleading
with respect to the relation to the requested ranges
(,
)
C.4. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-02
o Included (Proxy-)Auth-Info header field definition from RFC 7615
()
o In Section 9.3.3, clarify POST caching
()
o Add Section 15.5.19 to reserve the 418 status code
()
o In Section 3.4 and Section 10.1.1, clarified when a response can
be sent ()
o In Section 8.3.2, explain the difference between the "token"
production, the RFC 2978 ABNF for charset names, and the actual
registration practice (, )
o In Section 3.1, removed the fragment component in the URI scheme
definitions as per Section 4.3 of [URI], furthermore moved
fragment discussion into a separate section
(,
, )
o In Section 2.5, add language about minor HTTP version number
defaulting ()
o Added Section 15.5.21 for status code 422, previously defined in
Section 11.2 of [WEBDAV] ()
o In Section 15.5.17, fixed prose about byte range comparison
(,
)
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o In Section 3.4, explain that request/response correlation is
version specific ()
C.5. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-03
o In Section 15.4.9, include status code 308 from RFC 7538
()
o In Section 8.3.1, clarify that the charset parameter value is
case-insensitive due to the definition in RFC 2046
()
o Define a separate registry for HTTP header field names
()
o In Section 12.1, refactor and clarify description of wildcard
("*") handling ()
o Deprecate Accept-Charset ()
o In Section 13.2, mention Cache-Control: immutable
()
o In Section 5.3, clarify when header field combination is allowed
()
o In Section 18.4, instruct IANA to mark Content-MD5 as obsolete
()
o Use RFC 7405 ABNF notation for case-sensitive string constants
()
o Rework Section 3.4 to be more version-independent
()
o In Section 9.3.5, clarify that DELETE needs to be successful to
invalidate cache (, )
C.6. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-04
o In Section 5.5, fix field-content ABNF
(,
)
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o Move Section 5.6.6 into its own section
()
o In Section 8.3, reference MIME Sniffing
()
o In Section 5.6.1, simplify the #rule mapping for recipients
(,
)
o In Section 9.3.7, remove misleading text about "extension" of HTTP
is needed to define method content ()
o Fix editorial issue in Section 3.2 ()
o In Section 15.5.21, rephrase language not to use "entity" anymore,
and also avoid lowercase "may" ()
o Move discussion of retries from [HTTP/1.1] into Section 9.2.2
()
C.7. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-05
o Moved transport-independent part of the description of trailers
into Section 6.5 ()
o Loosen requirements on retries based upon implementation behavior
()
o In Section 18.9, update IANA port registry for TCP/UDP on ports 80
and 443 ()
o In Section 16.3.2.2, revise guidelines for new header field names
()
o In Section 9.2.3, remove concept of "cacheable methods" in favor
of prose (,
)
o In Section 17.1, mention that the concept of authority can be
modified by protocol extensions ()
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o Create new subsection on content in Section 6.4, taken from
portions of message body ()
o Moved definition of "Whitespace" into new container "Generic
Syntax" ()
o In Section 3.1, recommend minimum URI size support for
implementations ()
o In Section 14.1, refactored the range-unit and ranges-specifier
grammars (,
)
o In Section 9.3.1, caution against a request content more strongly
()
o Reorganized text in Section 16.3.2.2 ()
o In Section 15.5.4, replace "authorize" with "fulfill"
()
o In Section 9.3.7, removed a misleading statement about Content-
Length (,
)
o In Section 17.1, add text from RFC 2818
()
o Changed "cacheable by default" to "heuristically cacheable"
throughout ()
C.8. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-06
o In Section 7.6.3, simplify received-by grammar (and disallow comma
character) ()
o In Section 5.1, give guidance on interoperable field names
()
o In Section 5.6.3, define the semantics and possible replacement of
whitespace when it is known to occur (, )
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o In Section 6.3, introduce field terminology and distinguish
between field line values and field values; use terminology
consistently throughout ()
o Moved #rule definition into Section 5.5 and whitespace into
Section 2.1 ()
o In Section 14.1, explicitly call out range unit names as case-
insensitive, and encourage registration
()
o In Section 8.4.1, explicitly call out content codings as case-
insensitive, and encourage registration
()
o In Section 5.1, explicitly call out field names as case-
insensitive ()
o In Section 17.13, cite [Bujlow] ()
o In Section 15, formally define "final" and "interim" status codes
()
o In Section 9.3.5, caution against a request content more strongly
()
o In Section 8.8.3, note that Etag can be used in trailers
()
o In Section 18.4, consider reserved fields as well
()
o In Section 4.2.4, be more correct about what was deprecated by RFC
3986 (,
)
o In Section 5.3, recommend comma SP when combining field lines
()
o In Section 7.2, make explicit requirements on origin server to use
authority from absolute-form when available
()
o In Section 4.2.1, Section 4.2.2, Section 4.3.1, and Section 7.3.3,
refactored schemes to define origin and authoritative access to an
origin server for both "http" and "https" URIs to account for
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alternative services and secured connections that are not
necessarily based on TCP ()
o In Section 2.2, reference RFC 8174 as well
()
C.9. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-07
o In Section 14.2, explicitly reference the definition of
representation data as including any content codings
()
o Move TE: trailers from [HTTP/1.1] into Section 6.5.1
()
o In Section 8.6, adjust requirements for handling multiple content-
length values ()
o In Section 13.1.1 and Section 13.1.2, clarified condition
evaluation ()
o In Section 5.5, remove concept of obs-fold, as that is
HTTP/1-specific ()
o In Section 12, introduce the concept of request content
negotiation (Section 12.3) and define for Accept-Encoding
()
o In Section 15.3.6, Section 15.5.9, and Section 15.5.14, remove
HTTP/1-specific, connection-related requirements
()
o In Section 9.3.6, correct language about what is forwarded
()
o Throughout, replace "effective request URI", "request-target" and
similar with "target URI" ()
o In Section 16.3.2.2 and Section 16.2.2, describe how extensions
should consider scope of applicability
()
o In Section 3.4, don't rely on the HTTP/1.1 Messaging specification
to define "message" ()
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o In Section 8.7 and Section 10.1.3, note that URL resolution is
necessary ()
o In Section 3.2, explicitly reference 206 as one of the status
codes that provide representation data
()
o In Section 13.1.4, refine requirements so that they don't apply to
resources without a concept of modification time
()
o In Section 11.7.1, specify the scope as a request, not a target
resource ()
o In Section 3.4, introduce concept of "complete" messages
()
o In Section 7.1, Section 9.3.6, and Section 9.3.7, refine use of
"request target" ()
o Throughout, remove "status-line" and "request-line", as these are
HTTP/1.1-specific ()
C.10. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-08
o In Section 15.5.17, remove duplicate definition of what makes a
range satisfiable and refer instead to each range unit's
definition ()
o In Section 14.1.2 and Section 14.2, clarify that a selected
representation of zero length can only be satisfiable as a suffix
range and that a server can still ignore Range for that case
()
o In Section 12.5.1 and Section 15.5.16, allow "Accept" as response
field ()
o Appendix A now uses the sender variant of the "#" list expansion
()
o In Section 12.5.5, make the field list-based even when "*" is
present ()
o In Section 16.3.1, add optional "Comments" entry
()
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o In Section 18.4, reserve "*" as field name
()
o In Section 18.2, reserve "*" as method name
()
o In Section 13.1.1 and Section 13.1.2, state that multiple "*" is
unlikely to be interoperable ()
o In Section 12.5.1, avoid use of obsolete media type parameter on
text/html (,