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Network Working Group Request for Comments: 2068 Category: Standards Track |
R. Fielding UC Irvine J. Gettys J. Mogul DEC H. Frystyk T. Berners-Lee MIT/LCS January 1997 |
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level
protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information
systems. It is a generic, stateless, object-oriented protocol which
can be used for many tasks, such as name servers and distributed
object management systems, through extension of its request methods.
A feature of HTTP is the typing and negotiation of data
representation, allowing systems to be built independently of the
data being transferred.
HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. This specification defines the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.1".
1 Introduction
1.1 Purpose
1.2 Requirements
1.3 Terminology
1.4 Overall Operation
2 Notational Conventions and Generic Grammar
2.1 Augmented BNF
2.2 Basic Rules
3 Protocol Parameters
3.1 HTTP Version
3.2 Uniform Resource Identifiers
3.2.1 General Syntax
3.2.2 http URL
3.2.3 URI Comparison
3.3 Date/Time Formats
3.3.1 Full Date
3.3.2 Delta Seconds
3.4 Character Sets
3.5 Content Codings
3.6 Transfer Codings
3.7 Media Types
3.7.1 Canonicalization and Text Defaults
3.7.2 Multipart Types
3.8 Product Tokens
3.9 Quality Values
3.10 Language Tags
3.11 Entity Tags
3.12 Range Units
4 HTTP Message
4.1 Message Types
4.2 Message Headers
4.3 Message Body
4.4 Message Length
4.5 General Header Fields
5 Request
5.1 Request-Line
5.1.1 Method
5.1.2 Request-URI
5.2 The Resource Identified by a Request
5.3 Request Header Fields
6 Response
6.1 Status-Line
6.1.1 Status Code and Reason Phrase
6.2 Response Header Fields
7 Entity
7.1 Entity Header Fields
7.2 Entity Body
7.2.1 Type
7.2.2 Length
8 Connections
8.1 Persistent Connections
8.1.1 Purpose
8.1.2 Overall Operation
8.1.3 Proxy Servers
8.1.4 Practical Considerations
8.2 Message Transmission Requirements
9 Method Definitions
9.1 Safe and Idempotent Methods
9.1.1 Safe Methods
9.1.2 Idempotent Methods
9.2 OPTIONS
9.3 GET
9.4 HEAD
9.5 POST
9.6 PUT
9.7 DELETE
9.8 TRACE
10 Status Code Definitions
10.1 Informational 1xx
10.1.1 100 Continue
10.1.2 101 Switching Protocols
10.2 Successful 2xx
10.2.1 200 OK
10.2.2 201 Created
10.2.3 202 Accepted
10.2.4 203 Non-Authoritative Information
10.2.5 204 No Content
10.2.6 205 Reset Content
10.2.7 206 Partial Content
10.3 Redirection 3xx
10.3.1 300 Multiple Choices
10.3.2 301 Moved Permanently
10.3.3 302 Moved Temporarily
10.3.4 303 See Other
10.3.5 304 Not Modified
10.3.6 305 Use Proxy
10.4 Client Error 4xx
10.4.1 400 Bad Request
10.4.2 401 Unauthorized
10.4.3 402 Payment Required
10.4.4 403 Forbidden
10.4.5 404 Not Found
10.4.6 405 Method Not Allowed
10.4.7 406 Not Acceptable
10.4.8 407 Proxy Authentication Required
10.4.9 408 Request Timeout
10.4.10 409 Conflict
10.4.11 410 Gone
10.4.12 411 Length Required
10.4.13 412 Precondition Failed
10.4.14 413 Request Entity Too Large
10.4.15 414 Request-URI Too Long
10.4.16 415 Unsupported Media Type
10.5 Server Error 5xx
10.5.1 500 Internal Server Error
10.5.2 501 Not Implemented
10.5.3 502 Bad Gateway
10.5.4 503 Service Unavailable
10.5.5 504 Gateway Timeout
10.5.6 505 HTTP Version Not Supported
11 Access Authentication
11.1 Basic Authentication Scheme
11.2 Digest Authentication Scheme
12 Content Negotiation
12.1 Server-driven Negotiation
12.2 Agent-driven Negotiation
12.3 Transparent Negotiation
13 Caching in HTTP
13.1.1 Cache Correctness
13.1.2 Warnings
13.1.3 Cache-control Mechanisms
13.1.4 Explicit User Agent Warnings
13.1.5 Exceptions to the Rules and Warnings
13.1.6 Client-controlled Behavior
13.2 Expiration Model
13.2.1 Server-Specified Expiration
13.2.2 Heuristic Expiration
13.2.3 Age Calculations
13.2.4 Expiration Calculations
13.2.5 Disambiguating Expiration Values
13.2.6 Disambiguating Multiple Responses
13.3 Validation Model
13.3.1 Last-modified Dates
13.3.2 Entity Tag Cache Validators
13.3.3 Weak and Strong Validators
13.3.4 Rules for When to Use Entity Tags and Last-
modified Dates
13.3.5 Non-validating Conditionals
13.4 Response Cachability
13.5 Constructing Responses From Caches
13.5.1 End-to-end and Hop-by-hop Headers
13.5.2 Non-modifiable Headers
13.5.3 Combining Headers
13.5.4 Combining Byte Ranges
13.6 Caching Negotiated Responses
13.7 Shared and Non-Shared Caches
13.8 Errors or Incomplete Response Cache Behavior
13.9 Side Effects of GET and HEAD
13.10 Invalidation After Updates or Deletions
13.11 Write-Through Mandatory
13.12 Cache Replacement
13.13 History Lists
14 Header Field Definitions
14.1 Accept
14.2 Accept-Charset
14.3 Accept-Encoding
14.4 Accept-Language
14.5 Accept-Ranges
14.6 Age
14.7 Allow
14.8 Authorization
14.9 Cache-Control
14.9.1 What is Cachable
14.9.2 What May be Stored by Caches
14.9.3 Modifications of the Basic Expiration Mechanism 104
14.9.4 Cache Revalidation and Reload Controls
14.9.5 No-Transform Directive
14.9.6 Cache Control Extensions
14.10 Connection
14.11 Content-Base
14.12 Content-Encoding
14.13 Content-Language
14.14 Content-Length
14.15 Content-Location
14.16 Content-MD5
14.17 Content-Range
14.18 Content-Type
14.19 Date
14.20 ETag
14.21 Expires
14.22 From
14.23 Host
14.24 If-Modified-Since
14.25 If-Match
14.26 If-None-Match
14.27 If-Range
14.28 If-Unmodified-Since
14.29 Last-Modified
14.30 Location
14.31 Max-Forwards
14.32 Pragma
14.33 Proxy-Authenticate
14.34 Proxy-Authorization
14.35 Public
14.36 Range
14.36.1 Byte Ranges
14.36.2 Range Retrieval Requests
14.37 Referer
14.38 Retry-After
14.39 Server
14.40 Transfer-Encoding
14.41 Upgrade
14.42 User-Agent
14.43 Vary
14.44 Via
14.45 Warning
14.46 WWW-Authenticate
15 Security Considerations
15.1 Authentication of Clients
15.2 Offering a Choice of Authentication Schemes
15.3 Abuse of Server Log Information
15.4 Transfer of Sensitive Information
15.5 Attacks Based On File and Path Names
15.6 Personal Information
15.7 Privacy Issues Connected to Accept Headers
15.8 DNS Spoofing
15.9 Location Headers and Spoofing
16 Acknowledgments
17 References
18 Authors' Addresses
19 Appendices
19.1 Internet Media Type message/http
19.2 Internet Media Type multipart/byteranges
19.3 Tolerant Applications
19.4 Differences Between HTTP Entities and
MIME Entities
19.4.1 Conversion to Canonical Form
19.4.2 Conversion of Date Formats
19.4.3 Introduction of Content-Encoding
19.4.4 No Content-Transfer-Encoding
19.4.5 HTTP Header Fields in Multipart Body-Parts
19.4.6 Introduction of Transfer-Encoding
19.4.7 MIME-Version
19.5 Changes from HTTP/1.0
19.5.1 Changes to Simplify Multi-homed Web Servers and
Conserve IP Addresses
19.6 Additional Features
19.6.1 Additional Request Methods
19.6.2 Additional Header Field Definitions
19.7 Compatibility with Previous Versions
19.7.1 Compatibility with HTTP/1.0 Persistent
Connections
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. The first version of HTTP, referred to as HTTP/0.9, was a simple protocol for raw data transfer across the Internet. HTTP/1.0, as defined by RFC 1945 [6], improved the protocol by allowing messages to be in the format of MIME-like messages, containing metainformation about the data transferred and modifiers on the request/response semantics. However, HTTP/1.0 does not sufficiently take into consideration the effects of hierarchical proxies, caching, the need for persistent connections, and virtual hosts. In addition, the proliferation of incompletely-implemented applications calling themselves "HTTP/1.0" has necessitated a protocol version change in order for two communicating applications to determine each other's true capabilities.
This specification defines the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.1". This protocol includes more stringent requirements than HTTP/1.0 in order to ensure reliable implementation of its features.
Practical information systems require more functionality than simple retrieval, including search, front-end update, and annotation. HTTP allows an open-ended set of methods that indicate the purpose of a request. It builds on the discipline of reference provided by the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) [3][20], as a location (URL) [4] or name (URN) , for indicating the resource to which a method is to be applied. Messages are passed in a format similar to that used by Internet mail as defined by the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME).
HTTP is also used as a generic protocol for communication between user agents and proxies/gateways to other Internet systems, including those supported by the SMTP [16], NNTP [13], FTP [18], Gopher [2], and WAIS [10] protocols. In this way, HTTP allows basic hypermedia access to resources available from diverse applications.
This specification uses the same words as RFC 1123 [8] for defining the significance of each particular requirement. These words are:
MUST
This word or the adjective "required" means that the item is an
absolute requirement of the specification.
SHOULD
This word or the adjective "recommended" means that there may
exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore this
item, but the full implications should be understood and the case
carefully weighed before choosing a different course.
MAY
This word or the adjective "optional" means that this item is
truly optional. One vendor may choose to include the item because
a particular marketplace requires it or because it enhances the
product, for example; another vendor may omit the same item.
An implementation is not compliant if it fails to satisfy one or more
of the MUST requirements for the protocols it implements. An
implementation that satisfies all the MUST and all the SHOULD
requirements for its protocols is said to be "unconditionally
compliant"; one that satisfies all the MUST requirements but not all
the SHOULD requirements for its protocols is said to be
"conditionally compliant."
This specification uses a number of terms to refer to the roles played by participants in, and objects of, the HTTP communication.
connection
A transport layer virtual circuit established between two programs
for the purpose of communication.
message
The basic unit of HTTP communication, consisting of a structured
sequence of octets matching the syntax defined in section 4 and
transmitted via the connection.
request
An HTTP request message, as defined in section 5.
response
An HTTP response message, as defined in section 6.
resource
A network data object or service that can be identified by a URI,
as defined in section 3.2. Resources may be available in multiple
representations (e.g. multiple languages, data formats, size,
resolutions) or vary in other ways.
entity
The information transferred as the payload of a request or
response. An entity consists of metainformation in the form of
entity-header fields and content in the form of an entity-body, as
described in section 7.
representation
An entity included with a response that is subject to content
negotiation, as described in section 12. There may exist multiple
representations associated with a particular response status.
content negotiation
The mechanism for selecting the appropriate representation when
servicing a request, as described in section 12. The
representation of entities in any response can be negotiated
(including error responses).
variant
A resource may have one, or more than one, representation(s)
associated with it at any given instant. Each of these
representations is termed a `variant.' Use of the term `variant'
does not necessarily imply that the resource is subject to content
negotiation.
client
A program that establishes connections for the purpose of sending
requests.
user agent
The client which initiates a request. These are often browsers,
editors, spiders (web-traversing robots), or other end user tools.
server
An application program that accepts connections in order to
service requests by sending back responses. Any given program may
be capable of being both a client and a server; our use of these
terms refers only to the role being performed by the program for a
particular connection, rather than to the program's capabilities
in general. Likewise, any server may act as an origin server,
proxy, gateway, or tunnel, switching behavior based on the nature
of each request.
origin server
The server on which a given resource resides or is to be created.
proxy
An intermediary program which acts as both a server and a client
for the purpose of making requests on behalf of other clients.
Requests are serviced internally or by passing them on, with
possible translation, to other servers. A proxy must implement
both the client and server requirements of this specification.
gateway
A server which acts as an intermediary for some other server.
Unlike a proxy, a gateway receives requests as if it were the
origin server for the requested resource; the requesting client
may not be aware that it is communicating with a gateway.
tunnel
An intermediary program which is acting as a blind relay between
two connections. Once active, a tunnel is not considered a party
to the HTTP communication, though the tunnel may have been
initiated by an HTTP request. The tunnel ceases to exist when both
ends of the relayed connections are closed.
cache
A program's local store of response messages and the subsystem
that controls its message storage, retrieval, and deletion. A
cache stores cachable responses in order to reduce the response
time and network bandwidth consumption on future, equivalent
requests. Any client or server may include a cache, though a cache
cannot be used by a server that is acting as a tunnel.
cachable
A response is cachable if a cache is allowed to store a copy of
the response message for use in answering subsequent requests. The
rules for determining the cachability of HTTP responses are
defined in section 13. Even if a resource is cachable, there may
be additional constraints on whether a cache can use the cached
copy for a particular request.
first-hand
A response is first-hand if it comes directly and without
unnecessary delay from the origin server, perhaps via one or more
proxies. A response is also first-hand if its validity has just
been checked directly with the origin server.
explicit expiration time
The time at which the origin server intends that an entity should
no longer be returned by a cache without further validation.
heuristic expiration time
An expiration time assigned by a cache when no explicit expiration
time is available.
age
The age of a response is the time since it was sent by, or
successfully validated with, the origin server.
freshness lifetime
The length of time between the generation of a response and its
expiration time.
fresh
A response is fresh if its age has not yet exceeded its freshness
lifetime.
stale
A response is stale if its age has passed its freshness lifetime.
semantically transparent
A cache behaves in a "semantically transparent" manner, with
respect to a particular response, when its use affects neither the
requesting client nor the origin server, except to improve
performance. When a cache is semantically transparent, the client
receives exactly the same response (except for hop-by-hop headers)
that it would have received had its request been handled directly
by the origin server.
validator
A protocol element (e.g., an entity tag or a Last-Modified time)
that is used to find out whether a cache entry is an equivalent
copy of an entity.
The HTTP protocol is a request/response protocol. A client sends a request to the server in the form of a request method, URI, and protocol version, followed by a MIME-like message containing request modifiers, client information, and possible body content over a connection with a server. The server responds with a status line, including the message's protocol version and a success or error code, followed by a MIME-like message containing server information, entity metainformation, and possible entity-body content. The relationship between HTTP and MIME is described in appendix 19.4.
Most HTTP communication is initiated by a user agent and consists of a request to be applied to a resource on some origin server. In the simplest case, this may be accomplished via a single connection (v) between the user agent (UA) and the origin server (O).
request chain ------------------------>
UA -------------------v------------------- O
<----------------------- response chain
A more complicated situation occurs when one or more intermediaries
are present in the request/response chain. There are three common
forms of intermediary: proxy, gateway, and tunnel. A proxy is a
forwarding agent, receiving requests for a URI in its absolute form,
rewriting all or part of the message, and forwarding the reformatted
request toward the server identified by the URI. A gateway is a
receiving agent, acting as a layer above some other server(s) and, if
necessary, translating the requests to the underlying server's
protocol. A tunnel acts as a relay point between two connections
without changing the messages; tunnels are used when the
communication needs to pass through an intermediary (such as a
firewall) even when the intermediary cannot understand the contents
of the messages.
request chain --------------------------------------> UA -----v----- A -----v----- B -----v----- C -----v----- O
<------------------------------------- response chain
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. This distinction is important because some HTTP communication options may apply only to the connection with the nearest, non-tunnel neighbor, only to the end-points of the chain, or to all connections along the chain. Although the diagram is linear, each participant may be engaged in multiple, simultaneous communications. For example, B may 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.
Any party to the communication which is not acting as a tunnel may employ an internal cache for handling requests. 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 which has not been cached by UA or A.
request chain ---------->
UA -----v----- A -----v----- B - - - - - - C - - - - - - O
<--------- response chain
Not all responses are usefully cachable, and some requests may contain modifiers which place special requirements on cache behavior. HTTP requirements for cache behavior and cachable responses are defined in section 13.
In fact, there are a wide variety of architectures and configurations of caches and proxies currently being experimented with or deployed across the World Wide Web; these systems include national hierarchies of proxy caches to save transoceanic bandwidth, systems that broadcast or multicast cache entries, organizations that distribute subsets of cached data via CD-ROM, and so on. HTTP systems are used in corporate intranets over high-bandwidth links, and for access via PDAs with low-power radio links and intermittent connectivity. The goal of HTTP/1.1 is to support the wide diversity of configurations already deployed while introducing protocol constructs that meet the needs of those who build web applications that require high reliability and, failing that, at least reliable indications of failure.
HTTP communication usually takes place over TCP/IP connections. The default port is TCP 80, but other ports can be used. This does not preclude HTTP from being implemented on top of any other protocol on the Internet, or on other networks. HTTP only presumes a reliable transport; any protocol that provides such guarantees can be used; the mapping of the HTTP/1.1 request and response structures onto the transport data units of the protocol in question is outside the scope of this specification.
In HTTP/1.0, most implementations used a new connection for each request/response exchange. In HTTP/1.1, a connection may be used for one or more request/response exchanges, although connections may be closed for a variety of reasons (see section 8.1).
All of the mechanisms specified in this document are described in both prose and an augmented Backus-Naur Form (BNF) similar to that used by RFC 822 [9]. Implementers will need to be familiar with the notation in order to understand this specification. The augmented BNF includes the following constructs:
name = definition
The name of a rule is simply the name itself (without any enclosing
"<" and ">") and is separated from its definition by the equal "="
character. Whitespace is only significant in that indentation of
continuation lines is used to indicate a rule definition that spans
more than one line. Certain basic rules are in uppercase, such as
SP, LWS, HT, CRLF, DIGIT, ALPHA, etc. Angle brackets are used
within definitions whenever their presence will facilitate
discerning the use of rule names.
"literal"
Quotation marks surround literal text. Unless stated otherwise, the
text is case-insensitive.
(rule1 rule2)
Elements enclosed in parentheses are treated as a single element.
Thus, "(elem (foo | bar) elem)" allows the token sequences "elem
foo elem" and "elem bar elem".
*rule
The character "*" preceding an element indicates repetition. The
full form is "<n>*<m>element" indicating at least <n> and at most
<m> occurrences of element. Default values are 0 and infinity so
that "*(element)" allows any number, including zero; "1*element"
requires at least one; and "1*2element" allows one or two.
[rule]
Square brackets enclose optional elements; "[foo bar]" is
equivalent to "*1(foo bar)".
#rule
A construct "#" is defined, similar to "*", for defining lists of
elements. The full form is "<n>#<m>element " indicating at least
<n> and at most <m> elements, each separated by one or more commas
(",") and optional linear whitespace (LWS). This makes the usual
form of lists very easy; a rule such as "( *LWS element *( *LWS ","
*LWS element )) " can be shown as "1#element". Wherever this
construct is used, null elements are allowed, but do not contribute
to the count of elements present. That is, "(element), , (element) " is permitted, but counts as only two elements. Therefore, where at least one element is required, at least one non-null element must be present. Default values are 0 and infinity so that "#element" allows any number, including zero; "1#element" requires at least one; and "1#2element" allows one or two.
; comment
A semi-colon, set off some distance to the right of rule text,
starts a comment that continues to the end of line. This is a
simple way of including useful notes in parallel with the
specifications.
The following rules are used throughout this specification to describe basic parsing constructs. The US-ASCII coded character set is defined by ANSI X3.4-1986 [21].
OCTET = <any 8-bit sequence of data>
CHAR = <any US-ASCII character (octets 0 - 127)>
UPALPHA = <any US-ASCII uppercase letter "A".."Z">
LOALPHA = <any US-ASCII lowercase letter "a".."z">
ALPHA = UPALPHA | LOALPHA
DIGIT = <any US-ASCII digit "0".."9">
CTL = <any US-ASCII control character
(octets 0 - 31) and DEL (127)>
CR = <US-ASCII CR, carriage return (13)>
LF = <US-ASCII LF, linefeed (10)>
SP = <US-ASCII SP, space (32)>
HT = <US-ASCII HT, horizontal-tab (9)>
<"> = <US-ASCII double-quote mark (34)>
HTTP/1.1 defines the sequence CR LF as the end-of-line marker for all protocol elements except the entity-body (see appendix 19.3 for tolerant applications). The end-of-line marker within an entity-body is defined by its associated media type, as described in section 3.7.
CRLF = CR LF
HTTP/1.1 headers can be folded onto multiple lines if the continuation line begins with a space or horizontal tab. All linear white space, including folding, has the same semantics as SP.
LWS = [CRLF] 1*( SP | HT )
The TEXT rule is only used for descriptive field contents and values that are not intended to be interpreted by the message parser. Words of *TEXT may contain characters from character sets other than ISO 8859-1 [22] only when encoded according to the rules of RFC 1522 [14].
TEXT = <any OCTET except CTLs,
but including LWS>
Hexadecimal numeric characters are used in several protocol elements.
HEX = "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F"
| "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | DIGIT
Many HTTP/1.1 header field values consist of words separated by LWS or special characters. These special characters MUST be in a quoted string to be used within a parameter value.
token = 1*<any CHAR except CTLs or tspecials>
tspecials = "(" | ")" | "<" | ">" | "@"
| "," | ";" | ":" | "\" | <">
| "/" | "[" | "]" | "?" | "="
| "{" | "}" | SP | HT
Comments can be included in some HTTP header fields by surrounding the comment text with parentheses. Comments are only allowed in fields containing "comment" as part of their field value definition. In all other fields, parentheses are considered part of the field value.
comment = "(" *( ctext | comment ) ")"
ctext = <any TEXT excluding "(" and ")">
A string of text is parsed as a single word if it is quoted using double-quote marks.
quoted-string = ( <"> *(qdtext) <"> )
qdtext = <any TEXT except <">>
The backslash character ("\") may be used as a single-character quoting mechanism only within quoted-string and comment constructs.
quoted-pair = "\" CHAR
HTTP uses a "<major>.<minor>" numbering scheme to indicate versions of the protocol. The protocol versioning policy is intended to allow the sender to indicate the format of a message and its capacity for understanding further HTTP communication, rather than the features obtained via that communication. No change is made to the version number for the addition of message components which do not affect communication behavior or which only add to extensible field values. The <minor> number is incremented when the changes made to the protocol add features which do not change the general message parsing algorithm, but which may add to the message semantics and imply additional capabilities of the sender. The <major> number is incremented when the format of a message within the protocol is changed.
The version of an HTTP message is indicated by an HTTP-Version field in the first line of the message.
HTTP-Version = "HTTP" "/" 1*DIGIT "." 1*DIGIT
Note that the major and minor numbers MUST be treated as separate integers and that each may be incremented higher than a single digit. Thus, HTTP/2.4 is a lower version than HTTP/2.13, which in turn is lower than HTTP/12.3. Leading zeros MUST be ignored by recipients and MUST NOT be sent.
Applications sending Request or Response messages, as defined by this specification, MUST include an HTTP-Version of "HTTP/1.1". Use of this version number indicates that the sending application is at least conditionally compliant with this specification.
The HTTP version of an application is the highest HTTP version for which the application is at least conditionally compliant.
Proxy and gateway applications must be careful when forwarding
messages in protocol versions different from that of the application.
Since the protocol version indicates the protocol capability of the
sender, a proxy/gateway MUST never send a message with a version
indicator which is greater than its actual version; if a higher
version request is received, the proxy/gateway MUST either downgrade
the request version, respond with an error, or switch to tunnel
behavior. Requests with a version lower than that of the
proxy/gateway's version MAY be upgraded before being forwarded; the
proxy/gateway's response to that request MUST be in the same major
version as the request.
Note: Converting between versions of HTTP may involve modification of header fields required or forbidden by the versions involved.
URIs have been known by many names: WWW addresses, Universal Document Identifiers, Universal Resource Identifiers , and finally the combination of Uniform Resource Locators (URL) and Names (URN). As far as HTTP is concerned, Uniform Resource Identifiers are simply formatted strings which identify--via name, location, or any other characteristic--a resource.
URIs in HTTP can be represented in absolute form or relative to some known base URI, depending upon the context of their use. The two forms are differentiated by the fact that absolute URIs always begin with a scheme name followed by a colon.
URI = ( absoluteURI | relativeURI ) [ "#" fragment ]
absoluteURI = scheme ":" *( uchar | reserved )
relativeURI = net_path | abs_path | rel_path
net_path = "//" net_loc [ abs_path ]
abs_path = "/" rel_path
rel_path = [ path ] [ ";" params ] [ "?" query ]
path = fsegment *( "/" segment )
fsegment = 1*pchar
segment = *pchar
params = param *( ";" param )
param = *( pchar | "/" )
scheme = 1*( ALPHA | DIGIT | "+" | "-" | "." )
net_loc = *( pchar | ";" | "?" )
query = *( uchar | reserved )
fragment = *( uchar | reserved )
pchar = uchar | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+"
uchar = unreserved | escape
unreserved = ALPHA | DIGIT | safe | extra | national
escape = "%" HEX HEX
reserved = ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+"
extra = "!" | "*" | "'" | "(" | ")" | ","
safe = "$" | "-" | "_" | "."
unsafe = CTL | SP | <"> | "#" | "%" | "<" | ">"
national = <any OCTET excluding ALPHA, DIGIT,
reserved, extra, safe, and unsafe>
For definitive information on URL syntax and semantics, see RFC 1738 [4] and RFC 1808 [11]. The BNF above includes national characters not allowed in valid URLs as specified by RFC 1738, since HTTP servers are not restricted in the set of unreserved characters allowed to represent the rel_path part of addresses, and HTTP proxies may receive requests for URIs not defined by RFC 1738.
The HTTP protocol does not place any a priori limit on the length of a URI. Servers MUST be able to handle the URI of any resource they serve, and SHOULD be able to handle URIs of unbounded length if they provide GET-based forms that could generate such URIs. A server SHOULD return 414 (Request-URI Too Long) status if a URI is longer than the server can handle (see section 10.4.15).
Note: Servers should be cautious about depending on URI lengths above 255 bytes, because some older client or proxy implementations may not properly support these lengths.
The "http" scheme is used to locate network resources via the HTTP protocol. This section defines the scheme-specific syntax and semantics for http URLs.
http_URL = "http:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path ]
host = <A legal Internet host domain name
or IP address (in dotted-decimal form),
as defined by Section 2.1 of RFC 1123>
port = *DIGIT
If the port is empty or not given, port 80 is assumed. The semantics are that the identified resource is located at the server listening for TCP connections on that port of that host, and the Request-URI for the resource is abs_path. The use of IP addresses in URL's SHOULD be avoided whenever possible (see RFC 1900 [24]). If the abs_path is not present in the URL, it MUST be given as "/" when used as a Request-URI for a resource (section 5.1.2).
When comparing two URIs to decide if they match or not, a client SHOULD use a case-sensitive octet-by-octet comparison of the entire URIs, with these exceptions:
Characters other than those in the "reserved" and "unsafe" sets (see section 3.2) are equivalent to their ""%" HEX HEX" encodings.
For example, the following three URIs are equivalent:
http://abc.com:80/~smith/home.html
http://ABC.com/%7Esmith/home.html
http://ABC.com:/%7esmith/home.html
HTTP applications have historically allowed three different formats for the representation of date/time stamps:
Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT ; RFC 822, updated by RFC 1123 Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT ; RFC 850, obsoleted by RFC 1036
Sun Nov 6 08:49:37 1994 ; ANSI C's asctime() format
The first format is preferred as an Internet standard and represents a fixed-length subset of that defined by RFC 1123 (an update to RFC 822). The second format is in common use, but is based on the obsolete RFC 850 [12] date format and lacks a four-digit year. HTTP/1.1 clients and servers that parse the date value MUST accept all three formats (for compatibility with HTTP/1.0), though they MUST only generate the RFC 1123 format for representing HTTP-date values in header fields.
Note: Recipients of date values are encouraged to be robust in accepting date values that may have been sent by non-HTTP applications, as is sometimes the case when retrieving or posting messages via proxies/gateways to SMTP or NNTP.
All HTTP date/time stamps MUST be represented in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), without exception. This is indicated in the first two formats by the inclusion of "GMT" as the three-letter abbreviation for time zone, and MUST be assumed when reading the asctime format.
HTTP-date = rfc1123-date | rfc850-date | asctime-date
rfc1123-date = wkday "," SP date1 SP time SP "GMT"
rfc850-date = weekday "," SP date2 SP time SP "GMT"
asctime-date = wkday SP date3 SP time SP 4DIGIT
date1 = 2DIGIT SP month SP 4DIGIT
; day month year (e.g., 02 Jun 1982)
date2 = 2DIGIT "-" month "-" 2DIGIT
; day-month-year (e.g., 02-Jun-82)
date3 = month SP ( 2DIGIT | ( SP 1DIGIT ))
; month day (e.g., Jun 2)
time = 2DIGIT ":" 2DIGIT ":" 2DIGIT
; 00:00:00 - 23:59:59
wkday = "Mon" | "Tue" | "Wed"
| "Thu" | "Fri" | "Sat" | "Sun"
weekday = "Monday" | "Tuesday" | "Wednesday"
| "Thursday" | "Friday" | "Saturday" | "Sunday"
month = "Jan" | "Feb" | "Mar" | "Apr"
| "May" | "Jun" | "Jul" | "Aug"
| "Sep" | "Oct" | "Nov" | "Dec"
Note: HTTP requirements for the date/time stamp format apply only to their usage within the protocol stream. Clients and servers are not required to use these formats for user presentation, request logging, etc.
Some HTTP header fields allow a time value to be specified as an integer number of seconds, represented in decimal, after the time that the message was received.
delta-seconds = 1*DIGIT
HTTP uses the same definition of the term "character set" as that described for MIME:
The term "character set" is used in this document to refer to a method used with one or more tables to convert a sequence of octets into a sequence of characters. Note that unconditional conversion in the other direction is not required, in that not all characters may be available in a given character set and a character set may provide more than one sequence of octets to represent a particular character. This definition is intended to allow various kinds of character encodings, from simple single-table mappings such as US- ASCII to complex table switching methods such as those that use ISO 2022's techniques. However, the definition associated with a MIME character set name MUST fully specify the mapping to be performed from octets to characters. In particular, use of external profiling information to determine the exact mapping is not permitted.
Note: This use of the term "character set" is more commonly referred to as a "character encoding." However, since HTTP and MIME share the same registry, it is important that the terminology also be shared.
HTTP character sets are identified by case-insensitive tokens. The complete set of tokens is defined by the IANA Character Set registry [19].
charset = token
Although HTTP allows an arbitrary token to be used as a charset value, any token that has a predefined value within the IANA Character Set registry MUST represent the character set defined by that registry. Applications SHOULD limit their use of character sets to those defined by the IANA registry.
Content coding values indicate an encoding transformation that has been or can be applied to an entity. Content codings are primarily used to allow a document to be compressed or otherwise usefully transformed without losing the identity of its underlying media type and without loss of information. Frequently, the entity is stored in coded form, transmitted directly, and only decoded by the recipient.
content-coding = token
All content-coding values are case-insensitive. HTTP/1.1 uses content-coding values in the Accept-Encoding (section 14.3) and Content-Encoding (section 14.12) header fields. Although the value describes the content-coding, what is more important is that it indicates what decoding mechanism will be required to remove the encoding.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) acts as a registry for content-coding value tokens. Initially, the registry contains the following tokens:
gzip An encoding format produced by the file compression program "gzip" (GNU zip) as described in RFC 1952 [25]. This format is a Lempel- Ziv coding (LZ77) with a 32 bit CRC.
compress
The encoding format produced by the common UNIX file compression
program "compress". This format is an adaptive Lempel-Ziv-Welch
coding (LZW).
Note: Use of program names for the identification of encoding formats is not desirable and should be discouraged for future encodings. Their use here is representative of historical practice, not good design. For compatibility with previous implementations of HTTP, applications should consider "x-gzip" and "x-compress" to be equivalent to "gzip" and "compress" respectively.
deflate The "zlib" format defined in RFC 1950[31] in combination with the "deflate" compression mechanism described in RFC 1951[29].
New content-coding value tokens should be registered; to allow interoperability between clients and servers, specifications of the content coding algorithms needed to implement a new value should be publicly available and adequate for independent implementation, and conform to the purpose of content coding defined in this section.
Transfer coding values are used to indicate an encoding
transformation that has been, can be, or may need to be applied to an
entity-body in order to ensure "safe transport" through the network.
This differs from a content coding in that the transfer coding is a
property of the message, not of the original entity.
transfer-coding = "chunked" | transfer-extension
transfer-extension = token
All transfer-coding values are case-insensitive. HTTP/1.1 uses transfer coding values in the Transfer-Encoding header field (section 14.40).
Transfer codings are analogous to the Content-Transfer-Encoding values of MIME , which were designed to enable safe transport of binary data over a 7-bit transport service. However, safe transport has a different focus for an 8bit-clean transfer protocol. In HTTP, the only unsafe characteristic of message-bodies is the difficulty in determining the exact body length (section 7.2.2), or the desire to encrypt data over a shared transport.
The chunked encoding modifies the body of a message in order to transfer it as a series of chunks, each with its own size indicator, followed by an optional footer containing entity-header fields. This allows dynamically-produced content to be transferred along with the information necessary for the recipient to verify that it has received the full message.
Chunked-Body = *chunk
"0" CRLF
footer
CRLF
chunk = chunk-size [ chunk-ext ] CRLF
chunk-data CRLF
hex-no-zero = <HEX excluding "0">
chunk-size = hex-no-zero *HEX
chunk-ext = *( ";" chunk-ext-name [ "=" chunk-ext-value ] )
chunk-ext-name = token
chunk-ext-val = token | quoted-string
chunk-data = chunk-size(OCTET)
footer = *entity-header
The chunked encoding is ended by a zero-sized chunk followed by the footer, which is terminated by an empty line. The purpose of the footer is to provide an efficient way to supply information about an entity that is generated dynamically; applications MUST NOT send header fields in the footer which are not explicitly defined as being appropriate for the footer, such as Content-MD5 or future extensions to HTTP for digital signatures or other facilities.
An example process for decoding a Chunked-Body is presented in appendix 19.4.6.
All HTTP/1.1 applications MUST be able to receive and decode the
"chunked" transfer coding, and MUST ignore transfer coding extensions
they do not understand. A server which receives an entity-body with a
transfer-coding it does not understand SHOULD return 501
(Unimplemented), and close the connection. A server MUST NOT send
transfer-codings to an HTTP/1.0 client.
HTTP uses Internet Media Types in the Content-Type (section 14.18) and Accept (section 14.1) header fields in order to provide open and extensible data typing and type negotiation.
media-type = type "/" subtype *( ";" parameter )
type = token
subtype = token
Parameters may follow the type/subtype in the form of attribute/value pairs.
parameter = attribute "=" value
attribute = token
value = token | quoted-string
The type, subtype, and parameter attribute names are case- insensitive. Parameter values may or may not be case-sensitive, depending on the semantics of the parameter name. Linear white space (LWS) MUST NOT be used between the type and subtype, nor between an attribute and its value. User agents that recognize the media-type MUST process (or arrange to be processed by any external applications used to process that type/subtype by the user agent) the parameters for that MIME type as described by that type/subtype definition to the and inform the user of any problems discovered.
Note: some older HTTP applications do not recognize media type parameters. When sending data to older HTTP applications, implementations should only use media type parameters when they are required by that type/subtype definition.
Media-type values are registered with the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). The media type registration process is outlined in RFC 2048 [17]. Use of non-registered media types is discouraged.
Internet media types are registered with a canonical form. In general, an entity-body transferred via HTTP messages MUST be represented in the appropriate canonical form prior to its transmission; the exception is "text" types, as defined in the next paragraph.
When in canonical form, media subtypes of the "text" type use CRLF as the text line break. HTTP relaxes this requirement and allows the transport of text media with plain CR or LF alone representing a line break when it is done consistently for an entire entity-body. HTTP applications MUST accept CRLF, bare CR, and bare LF as being representative of a line break in text media received via HTTP. In addition, if the text is represented in a character set that does not use octets 13 and 10 for CR and LF respectively, as is the case for some multi-byte character sets, HTTP allows the use of whatever octet sequences are defined by that character set to represent the equivalent of CR and LF for line breaks. This flexibility regarding line breaks applies only to text media in the entity-body; a bare CR or LF MUST NOT be substituted for CRLF within any of the HTTP control structures (such as header fields and multipart boundaries).
If an entity-body is encoded with a Content-Encoding, the underlying data MUST be in a form defined above prior to being encoded.
The "charset" parameter is used with some media types to define the character set (section 3.4) of the data. When no explicit charset parameter is provided by the sender, media subtypes of the "text" type are defined to have a default charset value of "ISO-8859-1" when received via HTTP. Data in character sets other than "ISO-8859-1" or its subsets MUST be labeled with an appropriate charset value.
Some HTTP/1.0 software has interpreted a Content-Type header without charset parameter incorrectly to mean "recipient should guess." Senders wishing to defeat this behavior MAY include a charset parameter even when the charset is ISO-8859-1 and SHOULD do so when it is known that it will not confuse the recipient.
Unfortunately, some older HTTP/1.0 clients did not deal properly with an explicit charset parameter. HTTP/1.1 recipients MUST respect the charset label provided by the sender; and those user agents that have a provision to "guess" a charset MUST use the charset from the content-type field if they support that charset, rather than the recipient's preference, when initially displaying a document.
MIME provides for a number of "multipart" types -- encapsulations of one or more entities within a single message-body. All multipart types share a common syntax, as defined in MIME [7], and MUST include a boundary parameter as part of the media type value. The message body is itself a protocol element and MUST therefore use only CRLF to represent line breaks between body-parts. Unlike in MIME, the epilogue of any multipart message MUST be empty; HTTP applications MUST NOT transmit the epilogue (even if the original multipart contains an epilogue).
In HTTP, multipart body-parts MAY contain header fields which are significant to the meaning of that part. A Content-Location header field (section 14.15) SHOULD be included in the body-part of each enclosed entity that can be identified by a URL.
In general, an HTTP user agent SHOULD follow the same or similar behavior as a MIME user agent would upon receipt of a multipart type. If an application receives an unrecognized multipart subtype, the application MUST treat it as being equivalent to "multipart/mixed".
Note: The "multipart/form-data" type has been specifically defined for carrying form data suitable for processing via the POST request method, as described in RFC 1867 [15].
Product tokens are used to allow communicating applications to identify themselves by software name and version. Most fields using product tokens also allow sub-products which form a significant part of the application to be listed, separated by whitespace. By convention, the products are listed in order of their significance for identifying the application.
product = token ["/" product-version]
product-version = token
Examples:
User-Agent: CERN-LineMode/2.15 libwww/2.17b3
Server: Apache/0.8.4
Product tokens should be short and to the point -- use of them for advertising or other non-essential information is explicitly forbidden. Although any token character may appear in a product- version, this token SHOULD only be used for a version identifier (i.e., successive versions of the same product SHOULD only differ in the product-version portion of the product value).
HTTP content negotiation (section 12) uses short "floating point" numbers to indicate the relative importance ("weight") of various negotiable parameters. A weight is normalized to a real number in the range 0 through 1, where 0 is the minimum and 1 the maximum value. HTTP/1.1 applications MUST NOT generate more than three digits after the decimal point. User configuration of these values SHOULD also be limited in this fashion.
qvalue = ( "0" [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] )
| ( "1" [ "." 0*3("0") ] )
"Quality values" is a misnomer, since these values merely represent relative degradation in desired quality.
A language tag 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 fields.
The syntax and registry of HTTP language tags is the same as that defined by RFC 1766 [1]. In summary, a language tag is composed of 1 or more parts: A primary language tag and a possibly empty series of subtags:
language-tag = primary-tag *( "-" subtag )
primary-tag = 1*8ALPHA
subtag = 1*8ALPHA
Whitespace is not allowed within the tag and all tags are case- insensitive. The name space of language tags is administered by the IANA. Example tags include:
en, en-US, en-cockney, i-cherokee, x-pig-latin
where any two-letter primary-tag is an ISO 639 language abbreviation and any two-letter initial subtag is an ISO 3166 country code. (The last three tags above are not registered tags; all but the last are examples of tags which could be registered in future.)
Entity tags are used for comparing two or more entities from the same requested resource. HTTP/1.1 uses entity tags in the ETag (section 14.20), If-Match (section 14.25), If-None-Match (section 14.26), and If-Range (section 14.27) header fields. The definition of how they are used and compared as cache validators is in section 13.3.3. An entity tag consists of an opaque quoted string, possibly prefixed by a weakness indicator.
entity-tag = [ weak ] opaque-tag
weak = "W/"
opaque-tag = quoted-string
A "strong entity tag" may be shared by two entities of a resource only if they are equivalent by octet equality.
A "weak entity tag," indicated by the "W/" prefix, may be shared by two entities of a resource only if the entities are equivalent and could be substituted for each other with no significant change in semantics. A weak entity tag can only be used for weak comparison.
An entity tag MUST be unique across all versions of all entities associated with a particular resource. A given entity tag value may be used for entities obtained by requests on different URIs without implying anything about the equivalence of those entities.
HTTP/1.1 allows a client to request that only part (a range of) the response entity be included within the response. HTTP/1.1 uses range units in the Range (section 14.36) and Content-Range (section 14.17) header fields. An entity may be broken down into subranges according to various structural units.
range-unit = bytes-unit | other-range-unit
bytes-unit = "bytes"
other-range-unit = token
HTTP messages consist of requests from client to server and responses from server to client.
HTTP-message = Request | Response ; HTTP/1.1 messages
Request (section 5) and Response (section 6) messages use the generic message format of RFC 822 [9] for transferring entities (the payload of the message). Both types of message consist of a start-line, one or more header fields (also known as "headers"), an empty line (i.e., a line with nothing preceding the CRLF) indicating the end of the header fields, and an optional message-body.
generic-message = start-line
*message-header
CRLF
[ message-body ]
start-line = Request-Line | Status-Line
In the interest of robustness, servers SHOULD ignore any empty line(s) received where a Request-Line is expected. In other words, if the server is reading the protocol stream at the beginning of a message and receives a CRLF first, it should ignore the CRLF.
Note: certain buggy HTTP/1.0 client implementations generate an extra CRLF's after a POST request. To restate what is explicitly forbidden by the BNF, an HTTP/1.1 client must not preface or follow a request with an extra CRLF.
HTTP header fields, which include general-header (section 4.5),
request-header (section 5.3), response-header (section 6.2), and
entity-header (section 7.1) fields, follow the same generic format as
that given in Section 3.1 of RFC 822 [9]. Each header field consists
of a name followed by a colon (":") and the field value. Field names
are case-insensitive. The field value may be preceded by any amount
of LWS, though a single SP is preferred. Header fields can be
extended over multiple lines by preceding each extra line with at
least one SP or HT. Applications SHOULD follow "common form" when
generating HTTP constructs, since there might exist some
implementations that fail to accept anything beyond the common forms.
message-header = field-name ":" [ field-value ] CRLF
field-name = token
field-value = *( field-content | LWS )
field-content = <the OCTETs making up the field-value
and consisting of either *TEXT or combinations
of token, tspecials, and quoted-string>
The order in which header fields with differing field names are received is not significant. However, it is "good practice" to send general-header fields first, followed by request-header or response- header fields, and ending with the entity-header fields.
Multiple message-header fields with the same field-name may be
present in a message if and only if the entire field-value for that
header field is defined as a comma-separated list [i.e., #(values)].
It MUST be possible to combine the multiple header fields into one
"field-name: field-value" pair, without changing the semantics of the
message, by appending each subsequent field-value to the first, each
separated by a comma. The order in which header fields with the same
field-name are received is therefore significant to the
interpretation of the combined field value, and thus a proxy MUST NOT
change the order of these field values when a message is forwarded.
The message-body (if any) of an HTTP message is used to carry the entity-body associated with the request or response. The message-body differs from the entity-body only when a transfer coding has been applied, as indicated by the Transfer-Encoding header field (section 14.40).
message-body = entity-body
| <entity-body encoded as per Transfer-Encoding>
Transfer-Encoding MUST be used to indicate any transfer codings applied by an application to ensure safe and proper transfer of the message. Transfer-Encoding is a property of the message, not of the entity, and thus can be added or removed by any application along the request/response chain.
The rules for when a message-body is allowed in a message differ for requests and responses.
The presence of a message-body in a request is signaled by the inclusion of a Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header field in the request's message-headers. A message-body MAY be included in a request only when the request method (section 5.1.1) allows an entity-body.
For response messages, whether or not a message-body is included with
a message is dependent on both the request method and the response
status code (section 6.1.1). All responses to the HEAD request method
MUST NOT include a message-body, even though the presence of entity-
header fields might lead one to believe they do. All 1xx
(informational), 204 (no content), and 304 (not modified) responses
MUST NOT include a message-body. All other responses do include a
message-body, although it may be of zero length.
When a message-body is included with a message, the length of that body is determined by one of the following (in order of precedence):
the length is defined by the chunked encoding (section 3.6).
For compatibility with HTTP/1.0 applications, HTTP/1.1 requests containing a message-body MUST include a valid Content-Length header field unless the server is known to be HTTP/1.1 compliant. If a request contains a message-body and a Content-Length is not given, the server SHOULD respond with 400 (bad request) if it cannot determine the length of the message, or with 411 (length required) if it wishes to insist on receiving a valid Content-Length.
All HTTP/1.1 applications that receive entities MUST accept the "chunked" transfer coding (section 3.6), thus allowing this mechanism to be used for messages when the message length cannot be determined in advance.
Messages MUST NOT include both a Content-Length header field and the "chunked" transfer coding. If both are received, the Content-Length MUST be ignored.
When a Content-Length is given in a message where a message-body is allowed, its field value MUST exactly match the number of OCTETs in the message-body. HTTP/1.1 user agents MUST notify the user when an invalid length is received and detected.
There are a few header fields which have general applicability for both request and response messages, but which do not apply to the entity being transferred. These header fields apply only to the message being transmitted.
general-header = Cache-Control ; Section 14.9
| Connection ; Section 14.10
| Date ; Section 14.19
| Pragma ; Section 14.32
| Transfer-Encoding ; Section 14.40
| Upgrade ; Section 14.41
| Via ; Section 14.44
General-header field names can be extended reliably only in combination with a change in the protocol version. However, new or experimental header fields may be given the semantics of general header fields if all parties in the communication recognize them to be general-header fields. Unrecognized header fields are treated as entity-header fields.
A request message from a client to a server includes, within the first line of that message, the method to be applied to the resource, the identifier of the resource, and the protocol version in use.
Request = Request-Line ; Section 5.1
*( general-header ; Section 4.5
| request-header ; Section 5.3
| entity-header ) ; Section 7.1
CRLF
[ message-body ] ; Section 7.2
The Request-Line begins with a method token, followed by the Request-URI and the protocol version, and ending with CRLF. The elements are separated by SP characters. No CR or LF are allowed except in the final CRLF sequence.
Request-Line = Method SP Request-URI SP HTTP-Version CRLF
The Method token indicates the method to be performed on the resource identified by the Request-URI. The method is case-sensitive.
Method = "OPTIONS" ; Section 9.2
| "GET" ; Section 9.3
| "HEAD" ; Section 9.4
| "POST" ; Section 9.5
| "PUT" ; Section 9.6
| "DELETE" ; Section 9.7
| "TRACE" ; Section 9.8
| extension-method
extension-method = token
The list of methods allowed by a resource can be specified in an Allow header field (section 14.7). The return code of the response always notifies the client whether a method is currently allowed on a resource, since the set of allowed methods can change dynamically. Servers SHOULD return the status code 405 (Method Not Allowed) if the method is known by the server but not allowed for the requested resource, and 501 (Not Implemented) if the method is unrecognized or not implemented by the server. The list of methods known by a server can be listed in a Public response-header field (section 14.35).
The methods GET and HEAD MUST be supported by all general-purpose servers. All other methods are optional; however, if the above methods are implemented, they MUST be implemented with the same semantics as those specified in section 9.
The Request-URI is a Uniform Resource Identifier (section 3.2) and identifies the resource upon which to apply the request.
Request-URI = "*" | absoluteURI | abs_path
The three options for Request-URI are dependent on the nature of the request. The asterisk "*" means that the request does not apply to a particular resource, but to the server itself, and is only allowed when the method used does not necessarily apply to a resource. One example would be
OPTIONS * HTTP/1.1
The absoluteURI form is required when the request is being made to a proxy. The proxy is requested to forward the request or service it
from a valid cache, and return the response. Note that the proxy MAY forward the request on to another proxy or directly to the server specified by the absoluteURI. In order to avoid request loops, a proxy MUST be able to recognize all of its server names, including any aliases, local variations, and the numeric IP address. An example Request-Line would be:
GET http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TheProject.html HTTP/1.1
To allow for transition to absoluteURIs in all requests in future versions of HTTP, all HTTP/1.1 servers MUST accept the absoluteURI form in requests, even though HTTP/1.1 clients will only generate them in requests to proxies.
The most common form of Request-URI is that used to identify a resource on an origin server or gateway. In this case the absolute path of the URI MUST be transmitted (see section 3.2.1, abs_path) as the Request-URI, and the network location of the URI (net_loc) MUST be transmitted in a Host header field. For example, a client wishing to retrieve the resource above directly from the origin server would create a TCP connection to port 80 of the host "www.w3.org" and send the lines:
GET /pub/WWW/TheProject.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.w3.org
followed by the remainder of the Request. Note that the absolute path cannot be empty; if none is present in the original URI, it MUST be given as "/" (the server root).
If a proxy receives a request without any path in the Request-URI and the method specified is capable of supporting the asterisk form of request, then the last proxy on the request chain MUST forward the request with "*" as the final Request-URI. For example, the request
OPTIONS http://www.ics.uci.edu:8001 HTTP/1.1
would be forwarded by the proxy as
OPTIONS * HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.uci.edu:8001
after connecting to port 8001 of host "www.ics.uci.edu".
The Request-URI is transmitted in the format specified in section 3.2.1. The origin server MUST decode the Request-URI in order to properly interpret the request. Servers SHOULD respond to invalid Request-URIs with an appropriate status code.
In requests that they forward, proxies MUST NOT rewrite the "abs_path" part of a Request-URI in any way except as noted above to replace a null abs_path with "*", no matter what the proxy does in its internal implementation.
Note: The "no rewrite" rule prevents the proxy from changing the meaning of the request when the origin server is improperly using a non-reserved URL character for a reserved purpose. Implementers should be aware that some pre-HTTP/1.1 proxies have been known to rewrite the Request-URI.
HTTP/1.1 origin servers SHOULD be aware that the exact resource identified by an Internet request is determined by examining both the Request-URI and the Host header field.
An origin server that does not allow resources to differ by the requested host MAY ignore the Host header field value. (But see section 19.5.1 for other requirements on Host support in HTTP/1.1.)
An origin server that does differentiate resources based on the host requested (sometimes referred to as virtual hosts or vanity hostnames) MUST use the following rules for determining the requested resource on an HTTP/1.1 request:
Recipients of an HTTP/1.0 request that lacks a Host header field MAY attempt to use heuristics (e.g., examination of the URI path for something unique to a particular host) in order to determine what exact resource is being requested.
The request-header fields allow the client to pass additional information about the request, and about the client itself, to the server. These fields act as request modifiers, with semantics
equivalent to the parameters on a programming language method invocation.
request-header = Accept ; Section 14.1
| Accept-Charset ; Section 14.2
| Accept-Encoding ; Section 14.3
| Accept-Language ; Section 14.4
| Authorization ; Section 14.8
| From ; Section 14.22
| Host ; Section 14.23
| If-Modified-Since ; Section 14.24
| If-Match ; Section 14.25
| If-None-Match ; Section 14.26
| If-Range ; Section 14.27
| If-Unmodified-Since ; Section 14.28
| Max-Forwards ; Section 14.31
| Proxy-Authorization ; Section 14.34
| Range ; Section 14.36
| Referer ; Section 14.37
| User-Agent ; Section 14.42
Request-header field names can be extended reliably only in combination with a change in the protocol version. However, new or experimental header fields MAY be given the semantics of request- header fields if all parties in the communication recognize them to be request-header fields. Unrecognized header fields are treated as entity-header fields.
After receiving and interpreting a request message, a server responds with an HTTP response message.
Response = Status-Line ; Section 6.1
*( general-header ; Section 4.5
| response-header ; Section 6.2
| entity-header ) ; Section 7.1
CRLF
[ message-body ] ; Section 7.2
The first line of a Response message is the Status-Line, consisting of the protocol version followed by a numeric status code and its associated textual phrase, with each element separated by SP characters. No CR or LF is allowed except in the final CRLF sequence.
Status-Line = HTTP-Version SP Status-Code SP Reason-Phrase CRLF
The Status-Code element is a 3-digit integer result code of the attempt to understand and satisfy the request. These codes are fully defined in section 10. The Reason-Phrase is intended to give a short textual description of the Status-Code. The Status-Code is intended for use by automata and the Reason-Phrase is intended for the human user. The client is not required to examine or display the Reason- Phrase.
The first digit of the Status-Code defines the class of response. The last two digits do not have any categorization role. There are 5 values for the first digit:
The individual values of the numeric status codes defined for HTTP/1.1, and an example set of corresponding Reason-Phrase's, are presented below. The reason phrases listed here are only recommended
-- they may be replaced by local equivalents without affecting the
protocol.
Status-Code = "100" ; Continue
| "101" ; Switching Protocols
| "200" ; OK
| "201" ; Created
| "202" ; Accepted
| "203" ; Non-Authoritative Information
| "204" ; No Content
| "205" ; Reset Content
| "206" ; Partial Content
| "300" ; Multiple Choices
| "301" ; Moved Permanently
| "302" ; Moved Temporarily
| "303" ; See Other
| "304" ; Not Modified
| "305" ; Use Proxy
| "400" ; Bad Request
| "401" ; Unauthorized
| "402" ; Payment Required
| "403" ; Forbidden
| "404" ; Not Found
| "405" ; Method Not Allowed
| "406" ; Not Acceptable
| "407" ; Proxy Authentication Required
| "408" ; Request Time-out
| "409" ; Conflict
| "410" ; Gone
| "411" ; Length Required
| "412" ; Precondition Failed
| "413" ; Request Entity Too Large
| "414" ; Request-URI Too Large
| "415" ; Unsupported Media Type
| "500" ; Internal Server Error
| "501" ; Not Implemented
| "502" ; Bad Gateway
| "503" ; Service Unavailable
| "504" ; Gateway Time-out
| "505" ; HTTP Version not supported
| extension-code
extension-code = 3DIGIT
Reason-Phrase = *<TEXT, excluding CR, LF>
HTTP status codes are extensible. HTTP applications are not required to understand the meaning of all registered status codes, though such understanding is obviously desirable. However, applications MUST understand the class of any status code, as indicated by the first digit, and treat any unrecognized response as being equivalent to the x00 status code of that class, with the exception that an unrecognized response MUST NOT be cached. For example, if an unrecognized status code of 431 is received by the client, it can safely assume that there was something wrong with its request and treat the response as if it had received a 400 status code. In such cases, user agents SHOULD present to the user the entity returned with the response, since that entity is likely to include human- readable information which will explain the unusual status.
The response-header fields allow the server to pass additional information about the response which cannot be placed in the Status- Line. These header fields give information about the server and about further access to the resource identified by the Request-URI.
response-header = Age ; Section 14.6
| Location ; Section 14.30
| Proxy-Authenticate ; Section 14.33
| Public ; Section 14.35
| Retry-After ; Section 14.38
| Server ; Section 14.39
| Vary ; Section 14.43
| Warning ; Section 14.45
| WWW-Authenticate ; Section 14.46
Response-header field names can be extended reliably only in combination with a change in the protocol version. However, new or experimental header fields MAY be given the semantics of response- header fields if all parties in the communication recognize them to be response-header fields. Unrecognized header fields are treated as entity-header fields.
Request and Response messages MAY transfer an entity if not otherwise restricted by the request method or response status code. An entity consists of entity-header fields and an entity-body, although some responses will only include the entity-headers.
In this section, both sender and recipient refer to either the client or the server, depending on who sends and who receives the entity.
Entity-header fields define optional metainformation about the entity-body or, if no body is present, about the resource identified by the request.
entity-header = Allow ; Section 14.7
| Content-Base ; Section 14.11
| Content-Encoding ; Section 14.12
| Content-Language ; Section 14.13
| Content-Length ; Section 14.14
| Content-Location ; Section 14.15
| Content-MD5 ; Section 14.16
| Content-Range ; Section 14.17
| Content-Type ; Section 14.18
| ETag ; Section 14.20
| Expires ; Section 14.21
| Last-Modified ; Section 14.29
| extension-header
extension-header = message-header
The extension-header mechanism allows additional entity-header fields to be defined without changing the protocol, but these fields cannot be assumed to be recognizable by the recipient. Unrecognized header fields SHOULD be ignored by the recipient and forwarded by proxies.
The entity-body (if any) sent with an HTTP request or response is in a format and encoding defined by the entity-header fields.
entity-body = *OCTET
An entity-body is only present in a message when a message-body is present, as described in section 4.3. The entity-body is obtained from the message-body by decoding any Transfer-Encoding that may have been applied to ensure safe and proper transfer of the message.
When an entity-body is included with a message, the data type of that body is determined via the header fields Content-Type and Content- Encoding. These define a two-layer, ordered encoding model:
entity-body := Content-Encoding( Content-Type( data ) )
Content-Type specifies the media type of the underlying data. Content-Encoding may be used to indicate any additional content codings applied to the data, usually for the purpose of data compression, that are a property of the requested resource. There is no default encoding.
Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URL used to identify the resource. If the media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD treat it as type "application/octet-stream".
The length of an entity-body is the length of the message-body after any transfer codings have been removed. Section 4.4 defines how the length of a message-body is determined.
Prior to persistent connections, a separate TCP connection was established to fetch each URL, increasing the load on HTTP servers and causing congestion on the Internet. The use of inline images and other associated data often requires a client to make multiple requests of the same server in a short amount of time. Analyses of these performance problems are available [30][27]; analysis and results from a prototype implementation are in [26].
Persistent HTTP connections have a number of advantages:
HTTP implementations SHOULD implement persistent connections.
A significant difference between HTTP/1.1 and earlier versions of HTTP is that persistent connections are the default behavior of any HTTP connection. That is, unless otherwise indicated, the client may assume that the server will maintain a persistent connection.
Persistent connections provide a mechanism by which a client and a server can signal the close of a TCP connection. This signaling takes place using the Connection header field. Once a close has been signaled, the client MUST not send any more requests on that connection.
An HTTP/1.1 server MAY assume that a HTTP/1.1 client intends to maintain a persistent connection unless a Connection header including the connection-token "close" was sent in the request. If the server chooses to close the connection immediately after sending the response, it SHOULD send a Connection header including the connection-token close.
An HTTP/1.1 client MAY expect a connection to remain open, but would decide to keep it open based on whether the response from a server contains a Connection header with the connection-token close. In case the client does not want to maintain a connection for more than that request, it SHOULD send a Connection header including the connection-token close.
If either the client or the server sends the close token in the Connection header, that request becomes the last one for the connection.
Clients and servers SHOULD NOT assume that a persistent connection is maintained for HTTP versions less than 1.1 unless it is explicitly signaled. See section 19.7.1 for more information on backwards compatibility with HTTP/1.0 clients.
In order to remain persistent, all messages on the connection must have a self-defined message length (i.e., one not defined by closure of the connection), as described in section 4.4.
A client that supports persistent connections MAY "pipeline" its requests (i.e., send multiple requests without waiting for each response). A server MUST send its responses to those requests in the same order that the requests were received.
Clients which assume persistent connections and pipeline immediately after connection establishment SHOULD be prepared to retry their connection if the first pipelined attempt fails. If a client does such a retry, it MUST NOT pipeline before it knows the connection is persistent. Clients MUST also be prepared to resend their requests if the server closes the connection before sending all of the corresponding responses.
It is especially important that proxies correctly implement the properties of the Connection header field as specified in 14.2.1.
The proxy server MUST signal persistent connections separately with its clients and the origin servers (or other proxy servers) that it connects to. Each persistent connection applies to only one transport link.
A proxy server MUST NOT establish a persistent connection with an HTTP/1.0 client.
Servers will usually have some time-out value beyond which they will no longer maintain an inactive connection. Proxy servers might make this a higher value since it is likely that the client will be making more connections through the same server. The use of persistent connections places no requirements on the length of this time-out for either the client or the server.
When a client or server wishes to time-out it SHOULD issue a graceful close on the transport connection. Clients and servers SHOULD both constantly watch for the other side of the transport close, and respond to it as appropriate. If a client or server does not detect the other side's close promptly it could cause unnecessary resource drain on the network.
A client, server, or proxy MAY close the transport connection at any time. For example, a client MAY have started to send a new request at the same time that the server has decided to close the "idle" connection. From the server's point of view, the connection is being closed while it was idle, but from the client's point of view, a request is in progress.
This means that clients, servers, and proxies MUST be able to recover from asynchronous close events. Client software SHOULD reopen the transport connection and retransmit the aborted request without user interaction so long as the request method is idempotent (see section
However, this automatic retry SHOULD NOT be repeated if the second request fails.
Servers SHOULD always respond to at least one request per connection, if at all possible. Servers SHOULD NOT close a connection in the middle of transmitting a response, unless a network or client failure is suspected.
Clients that use persistent connections SHOULD limit the number of simultaneous connections that they maintain to a given server. A single-user client SHOULD maintain AT MOST 2 connections with any server or proxy. A proxy SHOULD use up to 2*N connections to another server or proxy, where N is the number of simultaneously active users. These guidelines are intended to improve HTTP response times and avoid congestion of the Internet or other networks.
Upon receiving a method subject to these requirements from an HTTP/1.1 (or later) client, an HTTP/1.1 (or later) server MUST either respond with 100 (Continue) status and continue to read from the input stream, or respond with an error status. If it responds with an error status, it MAY close the transport (TCP) connection or it MAY continue to read and discard the rest of the request. It MUST NOT perform the requested method if it returns an error status.
Clients SHOULD remember the version number of at least the most recently used server; if an HTTP/1.1 client has seen an HTTP/1.1 or later response from the server, and it sees the connection close before receiving any status from the server, the client SHOULD retry the request without user interaction so long as the request method is idempotent (see section 9.1.2); other methods MUST NOT be automatically retried, although user agents MAY offer a human operator the choice of retrying the request.. If the client does retry the request, the client
If an HTTP/1.1 client has not seen an HTTP/1.1 or later response from the server, it should assume that the server implements HTTP/1.0 or older and will not use the 100 (Continue) response. If in this case the client sees the connection close before receiving any status from the server, the client SHOULD retry the request. If the client does retry the request to this HTTP/1.0 server, it should use the following "binary exponential backoff" algorithm to be assured of obtaining a reliable response:
4. Compute T = R * (2**N), where N is the number of previous retries
of this request.
No matter what the server version, if an error status is received, the client
An HTTP/1.1 (or later) client that sees the connection close after receiving a 100 (Continue) but before receiving any other status SHOULD retry the request, and need not wait for 100 (Continue) response (but MAY do so if this simplifies the implementation).
The set of common methods for HTTP/1.1 is defined below. Although this set can be expanded, additional methods cannot be assumed to share the same semantics for separately extended clients and servers.
The Host request-header field (section 14.23) MUST accompany all HTTP/1.1 requests.
Implementers should be aware that the software represents the user in their interactions over the Internet, and should be careful to allow the user to be aware of any actions they may take which may have an unexpected significance to themselves or others.
In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods should never have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval. These methods should be considered "safe." This allows user agents to represent other methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a special way, so that the user is made aware of the fact that a possibly unsafe action is being requested.
Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in
fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.
Methods may also have the property of "idempotence" in that (aside from error or expiration issues) the side-effects of N > 0 identical requests is the same as for a single request. The methods GET, HEAD, PUT and DELETE share this property.
The OPTIONS method represents a request for information about the communication options available on the request/response chain identified by the Request-URI. This method allows the client to determine the options and/or requirements associated with a resource, or the capabilities of a server, without implying a resource action or initiating a resource retrieval.
Unless the server's response is an error, the response MUST NOT include entity information other than what can be considered as communication options (e.g., Allow is appropriate, but Content-Type is not). Responses to this method are not cachable.
If the Request-URI is an asterisk ("*"), the OPTIONS request is intended to apply to the server as a whole. A 200 response SHOULD include any header fields which indicate optional features implemented by the server (e.g., Public), including any extensions not defined by this specification, in addition to any applicable general or response-header fields. As described in section 5.1.2, an "OPTIONS *" request can be applied through a proxy by specifying the destination server in the Request-URI without any path information.
If the Request-URI is not an asterisk, the OPTIONS request applies only to the options that are available when communicating with that resource. A 200 response SHOULD include any header fields which indicate optional features implemented by the server and applicable to that resource (e.g., Allow), including any extensions not defined by this specification, in addition to any applicable general or response-header fields. If the OPTIONS request passes through a proxy, the proxy MUST edit the response to exclude those options which apply to a proxy's capabilities and which are known to be unavailable through that proxy.
The GET method means retrieve whatever information (in the form of an entity) is identified by the Request-URI. If the Request-URI refers to a data-producing process, it is the produced data which shall be returned as the entity in the response and not the source text of the process, unless that text happens to be the output of the process.
The semantics of the GET method change to a "conditional GET" if the request message includes an If-Modified-Since, If-Unmodified-Since, If-Match, If-None-Match, or If-Range header field. A conditional GET method requests that the entity be transferred only under the circumstances described by the conditional header field(s). The conditional GET method is intended to reduce unnecessary network usage by allowing cached entities to be refreshed without requiring multiple requests or transferring data already held by the client.
The semantics of the GET method change to a "partial GET" if the request message includes a Range header field. A partial GET requests that only part of the entity be transferred, as described in section 14.36. The partial GET method is intended to reduce unnecessary network usage by allowing partially-retrieved entities to be completed without transferring data already held by the client.
The response to a GET request is cachable if and only if it meets the requirements for HTTP caching described in section 13.
The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT return a message-body in the response. The metainformation contained in the HTTP headers in response to a HEAD request SHOULD be identical to the information sent in response to a GET request. This method can be used for obtaining metainformation about the entity implied by the request without transferring the entity-body itself. This method is often used for testing hypertext links for validity, accessibility, and recent modification.
The response to a HEAD request may be cachable in the sense that the information contained in the response may be used to update a previously cached entity from that resource. If the new field values indicate that the cached entity differs from the current entity (as would be indicated by a change in Content-Length, Content-MD5, ETag or Last-Modified), then the cache MUST treat the cache entry as stale.
The POST method is used to request that the destination server accept the entity enclosed in the request as a new subordinate of the resource identified by the Request-URI in the Request-Line. POST is designed to allow a uniform method to cover the following functions:
The actual function performed by the POST method is determined by the server and is usually dependent on the Request-URI. The posted entity is subordinate to that URI in the same way that a file is subordinate to a directory containing it, a news article is subordinate to a newsgroup to which it is posted, or a record is subordinate to a database.
The action performed by the POST method might not result in a resource that can be identified by a URI. In this case, either 200 (OK) or 204 (No Content) is the appropriate response status, depending on whether or not the response includes an entity that describes the result.
If a resource has been created on the origin server, the response SHOULD be 201 (Created) and contain an entity which describes the status of the request and refers to the new resource, and a Location header (see section 14.30).
Responses to this method are not cachable, unless the response includes appropriate Cache-Control or Expires header fields. However, the 303 (See Other) response can be used to direct the user agent to retrieve a cachable resource.
POST requests must obey the message transmission requirements set out in section 8.2.
The PUT method requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the supplied Request-URI. If the Request-URI refers to an already existing resource, the enclosed entity SHOULD be considered as a modified version of the one residing on the origin server. If the Request-URI does not point to an existing resource, and that URI is capable of being defined as a new resource by the requesting user agent, the origin server can create the resource with that URI. If a new resource is created, the origin server MUST inform the user agent via the 201 (Created) response. If an existing resource is modified, either the 200 (OK) or 204 (No Content) response codes SHOULD be sent to indicate successful completion of the request. If the resource could not be created or modified with the Request-URI, an appropriate error response SHOULD be given that reflects the nature of the problem. The recipient of the entity MUST NOT ignore any Content-* (e.g. Content-Range) headers that it does not understand or implement and MUST return a 501 (Not Implemented) response in such cases.
If the request passes through a cac