One document matched: draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-09.xml
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<rfc obsoletes="2616" category="std" ipr="pre5378Trust200902" docName="draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-09">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.1, Part 3">HTTP/1.1, part 3: Message Payload and Content Negotiation</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="Day Software">Day Software</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>23 Corporate Plaza DR, Suite 280</street>
<city>Newport Beach</city>
<region>CA</region>
<code>92660</code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<phone>+1-949-706-5300</phone>
<facsimile>+1-949-706-5305</facsimile>
<email>fielding@gbiv.com</email>
<uri>http://roy.gbiv.com/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="Jim Gettys">
<organization>One Laptop per Child</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>21 Oak Knoll Road</street>
<city>Carlisle</city>
<region>MA</region>
<code>01741</code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<email>jg@laptop.org</email>
<uri>http://www.laptop.org/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="Jeffrey C. Mogul">
<organization abbrev="HP">Hewlett-Packard Company</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>HP Labs, Large Scale Systems Group</street>
<street>1501 Page Mill Road, MS 1177</street>
<city>Palo Alto</city>
<region>CA</region>
<code>94304</code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<email>JeffMogul@acm.org</email>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Frystyk" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>1 Microsoft Way</street>
<city>Redmond</city>
<region>WA</region>
<code>98052</code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<email>henrikn@microsoft.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="Larry Masinter">
<organization abbrev="Adobe Systems">Adobe Systems, Incorporated</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>345 Park Ave</street>
<city>San Jose</city>
<region>CA</region>
<code>95110</code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<email>LMM@acm.org</email>
<uri>http://larry.masinter.net/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Leach" fullname="Paul J. Leach">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>1 Microsoft Way</street>
<city>Redmond</city>
<region>WA</region>
<code>98052</code>
</postal>
<email>paulle@microsoft.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization abbrev="W3C/MIT">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory</street>
<street>The Stata Center, Building 32</street>
<street>32 Vassar Street</street>
<city>Cambridge</city>
<region>MA</region>
<code>02139</code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<email>timbl@w3.org</email>
<uri>http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="Y." surname="Lafon" fullname="Yves Lafon" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="W3C">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>W3C / ERCIM</street>
<street>2004, rte des Lucioles</street>
<city>Sophia-Antipolis</city>
<region>AM</region>
<code>06902</code>
<country>France</country>
</postal>
<email>ylafon@w3.org</email>
<uri>http://www.raubacapeu.net/people/yves/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="J. F." surname="Reschke" fullname="Julian F. Reschke" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="greenbytes">greenbytes GmbH</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Hafenweg 16</street>
<city>Muenster</city><region>NW</region><code>48155</code>
<country>Germany</country>
</postal>
<phone>+49 251 2807760</phone>
<facsimile>+49 251 2807761</facsimile>
<email>julian.reschke@greenbytes.de</email>
<uri>http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<date month="March" year="2010" day="8"/>
<workgroup>HTTPbis Working Group</workgroup>
<abstract>
<t>
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. This document is Part 3 of the seven-part specification
that defines the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.1" and, taken together,
obsoletes RFC 2616. Part 3 defines HTTP message content,
metadata, and content negotiation.
</t>
</abstract>
<note title="Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor)">
<t>
Discussion of this draft should take place on the HTTPBIS working group
mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org). The current issues list is
at <eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/report/11"/>
and related documents (including fancy diffs) can be found at
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/"/>.
</t>
<t>
The changes in this draft are summarized in <xref target="changes.since.08"/>.
</t>
</note>
</front>
<middle>
<section title="Introduction" anchor="introduction">
<t>
This document defines HTTP/1.1 message payloads (a.k.a., content), the
associated metadata header fields that define how the payload is intended
to be interpreted by a recipient, the request header fields that
may influence content selection, and the various selection algorithms
that are collectively referred to as HTTP content negotiation.
</t>
<t>
This document is currently disorganized in order to minimize the changes
between drafts and enable reviewers to see the smaller errata changes.
The next draft will reorganize the sections to better reflect the content.
In particular, the sections on entities will be renamed payload and moved
to the first half of the document, while the sections on content negotiation
and associated request header fields will be moved to the second half. The
current mess reflects how widely dispersed these topics and associated
requirements had become in <xref target="RFC2616"/>.
</t>
<section title="Terminology" anchor="terminology">
<t>
This specification uses a number of terms to refer to the roles
played by participants in, and objects of, the HTTP communication.
</t>
<t>
<iref item="content negotiation"/>
<?rfc needLines="4"?>content negotiation
<list>
<t>
The mechanism for selecting the appropriate representation when
servicing a request. The representation of entities in any response
can be negotiated (including error responses).
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
<iref item="entity"/>
<?rfc needLines="4"?>entity
<list>
<t>
The information transferred as the payload of a request or
response. An entity consists of metadata in the form of
entity-header fields and content in the form of an entity-body.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
<iref item="representation"/>
<?rfc needLines="4"?>representation
<list>
<t>
An entity included with a response that is subject to content
negotiation. There may exist multiple
representations associated with a particular response status.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
<iref item="variant"/>
<?rfc needLines="4"?>variant
<list>
<t>
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.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Requirements" anchor="intro.requirements">
<t>
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in <xref target="RFC2119"/>.
</t>
<t>
An implementation is not compliant if it fails to satisfy one or more
of the MUST or REQUIRED level requirements for the protocols it
implements. An implementation that satisfies all the MUST or REQUIRED
level and all the SHOULD level requirements for its protocols is said
to be "unconditionally compliant"; one that satisfies all the MUST
level requirements but not all the SHOULD level requirements for its
protocols is said to be "conditionally compliant."
</t>
</section>
<section title="Syntax Notation" anchor="notation">
<t>
This specification uses the ABNF syntax defined in Section 1.2 of <xref target="Part1"/> (which
extends the syntax defined in <xref target="RFC5234"/> with a list rule).
<xref target="collected.abnf"/> shows the collected ABNF, with the list
rule expanded.
</t>
<t>
The following core rules are included by
reference, as defined in <xref target="RFC5234"/>, Appendix B.1:
ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return), CRLF (CR LF), CTL (controls),
DIGIT (decimal 0-9), DQUOTE (double quote),
HEXDIG (hexadecimal 0-9/A-F/a-f), LF (line feed),
OCTET (any 8-bit sequence of data), SP (space),
VCHAR (any visible USASCII character),
and WSP (whitespace).
</t>
<section title="Core Rules" anchor="core.rules">
<t>
The core rules below are defined in Section 1.2.2 of <xref target="Part1"/>:
</t>
<figure><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
quoted-string = <quoted-string, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
token = <token, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
OWS = <OWS, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
]]></artwork></figure>
</section>
<section title="ABNF Rules defined in other Parts of the Specification" anchor="abnf.dependencies">
<t>
The ABNF rules below are defined in other parts:
</t>
<figure><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
absolute-URI = <absolute-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
Content-Length = <Content-Length, defined in [Part1], Section 9.2>
header-field = <header-field, defined in [Part1], Section 3.2>
partial-URI = <partial-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
qvalue = <qvalue, defined in [Part1], Section 6.4>
]]></artwork></figure>
<figure><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Last-Modified = <Last-Modified, defined in [Part4], Section 6.6>
]]></artwork></figure>
<figure><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Content-Range = <Content-Range, defined in [Part5], Section 5.2>
]]></artwork></figure>
<figure><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Expires = <Expires, defined in [Part6], Section 3.3>
]]></artwork></figure>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Protocol Parameters" anchor="protocol.parameters">
<section title="Character Sets" anchor="character.sets">
<t>
HTTP uses the same definition of the term "character set" as that
described for MIME:
</t>
<t>
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
encoding, 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.
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
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.
</t>
</list></t>
<t anchor="rule.charset">
HTTP character sets are identified by case-insensitive tokens. The
complete set of tokens is defined by the IANA Character Set registry
(<eref target="http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets"/>).
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="charset"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
charset = token
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
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.
</t>
<t>
HTTP uses charset in two contexts: within an Accept-Charset request
header (in which the charset value is an unquoted token) and as the
value of a parameter in a Content-Type header (within a request or
response), in which case the parameter value of the charset parameter
may be quoted.
</t>
<t>
Implementors should be aware of IETF character set requirements <xref target="RFC3629"/>
<xref target="RFC2277"/>.
</t>
<section title="Missing Charset" anchor="missing.charset">
<t>
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 (<xref target="ISO-8859-1"/>) and SHOULD do so when
it is known that it will not confuse the recipient.
</t>
<t>
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. See
<xref target="canonicalization.and.text.defaults"/>.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Content Codings" anchor="content.codings">
<t>
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.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="content-coding"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
content-coding = token
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
All content-coding values are case-insensitive. HTTP/1.1 uses
content-coding values in the Accept-Encoding (<xref target="header.accept-encoding"/>) and
Content-Encoding (<xref target="header.content-encoding"/>) 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.
</t>
<t>
compress<iref item="compress (Coding Format)"/><iref item="Coding Format" subitem="compress"/>
<list>
<t>
See Section 6.2.2.1 of <xref target="Part1"/>.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
deflate<iref item="deflate (Coding Format)"/><iref item="Coding Format" subitem="deflate"/>
<list>
<t>
See Section 6.2.2.2 of <xref target="Part1"/>.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
gzip<iref item="gzip (Coding Format)"/><iref item="Coding Format" subitem="gzip"/>
<list>
<t>
See Section 6.2.2.3 of <xref target="Part1"/>.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
identity<iref item="identity (Coding Format)"/><iref item="Coding Format" subitem="identity"/>
<list><t>
The default (identity) encoding; the use of no transformation
whatsoever. This content-coding is used only in the Accept-Encoding
header, and SHOULD NOT be used in the Content-Encoding
header.
</t></list>
</t>
<section title="Content Coding Registry" anchor="content.coding.registry">
<t>
The HTTP Content Coding Registry defines the name space for the content
coding names.
</t>
<t>
Registrations MUST include the following fields:
<list style="symbols">
<t>Name</t>
<t>Description</t>
<t>Pointer to specification text</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Values to be added to this name space require expert review and a specification
(see "Expert Review" and "Specification Required" in
Section 4.1 of <xref target="RFC5226"/>), and MUST
conform to the purpose of content coding defined in this section.
</t>
<t>
The registry itself is maintained at
<eref target="http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters"/>.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Media Types" anchor="media.types">
<t>
HTTP uses Internet Media Types <xref target="RFC2046"/> in the Content-Type (<xref target="header.content-type"/>)
and Accept (<xref target="header.accept"/>) header fields in order to provide
open and extensible data typing and type negotiation.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="media-type"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="type"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="subtype"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
media-type = type "/" subtype *( OWS ";" OWS parameter )
type = token
subtype = token
]]></artwork></figure>
<t anchor="rule.parameter">
Parameters MAY follow the type/subtype in the form of attribute/value
pairs.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="parameter"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="attribute"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="value"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
parameter = attribute "=" value
attribute = token
value = token / quoted-string
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
The type, subtype, and parameter attribute names are case-insensitive.
Parameter values might or might not be case-sensitive, depending on the
semantics of the parameter name. 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.
</t>
<t>
A parameter value that matches the <xref target="core.rules" format="none">token</xref> production may be
transmitted as either a token or within a quoted-string. The quoted and
unquoted values are equivalent.
</t>
<t>
Note that 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.
</t>
<t>
Media-type values are registered with the Internet Assigned Number
Authority (IANA). The media type registration process is
outlined in <xref target="RFC4288"/>. Use of non-registered media types is
discouraged.
</t>
<section title="Canonicalization and Text Defaults" anchor="canonicalization.and.text.defaults">
<t>
Internet media types are registered with a canonical form. An
entity-body transferred via HTTP messages MUST be represented in the
appropriate canonical form prior to its transmission except for
"text" types, as defined in the next paragraph.
</t>
<t>
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).
</t>
<t>
If an entity-body is encoded with a content-coding, the underlying
data MUST be in a form defined above prior to being encoded.
</t>
<t>
The "charset" parameter is used with some media types to define the
character set (<xref target="character.sets"/>) 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. See
<xref target="missing.charset"/> for compatibility problems.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Multipart Types" anchor="multipart.types">
<t>
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 Section 5.1.1 of <xref target="RFC2046"/>,
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 RFC 2046, the epilogue of any multipart message MUST be
empty; HTTP applications MUST NOT transmit the epilogue (even if the
original multipart contains an epilogue). These restrictions exist in
order to preserve the self-delimiting nature of a multipart message-body,
wherein the "end" of the message-body is indicated by the
ending multipart boundary.
</t>
<t>
In general, HTTP treats a multipart message-body no differently than
any other media type: strictly as payload. The one exception is the
"multipart/byteranges" type (Appendix A of <xref target="Part5"/>) when it appears in a 206
(Partial Content) response.
<!-- jre: re-insert removed text pointing to caching? -->
In all
other cases, an HTTP user agent SHOULD follow the same or similar
behavior as a MIME user agent would upon receipt of a multipart type.
The MIME header fields within each body-part of a multipart message-body
do not have any significance to HTTP beyond that defined by
their MIME semantics.
</t>
<t>
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".
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
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 <xref target="RFC2388"/>.
</t>
</list></t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Language Tags" anchor="language.tags">
<t>
A language tag, as defined in <xref target="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 fields.
</t>
<t>
In summary, a language tag is composed of one or more parts: A primary
language subtag followed by a possibly empty series of subtags:
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="language-tag"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
language-tag = <Language-Tag, defined in [RFC5646], Section 2.1>
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
White space is not allowed within the tag and all tags are case-insensitive.
The name space of language subtags is administered by the IANA (see
<eref target="http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry"/>).
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Example tags include:</preamble>
<artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
en, en-US, es-419, az-Arab, x-pig-latin, man-Nkoo-GN
]]></artwork>
</figure>
<t>
See <xref target="RFC5646"/> for further information.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Entity" anchor="entity">
<t>
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.
</t>
<t>
In this section, both sender and recipient refer to either the client
or the server, depending on who sends and who receives the entity.
</t>
<section title="Entity Header Fields" anchor="entity.header.fields">
<t>
Entity-header fields define metainformation about the entity-body or,
if no body is present, about the resource identified by the request.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="entity-header"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="extension-header"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
entity-header = Content-Encoding ; Section 5.5
/ Content-Language ; Section 5.6
/ Content-Length ; [Part1], Section 9.2
/ Content-Location ; Section 5.7
/ Content-MD5 ; Section 5.8
/ Content-Range ; [Part5], Section 5.2
/ Content-Type ; Section 5.9
/ Expires ; [Part6], Section 3.3
/ Last-Modified ; [Part4], Section 6.6
/ extension-header
extension-header = header-field
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
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 MUST be forwarded by
transparent proxies.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Entity Body" anchor="entity.body">
<t>
The entity-body (if any) sent with an HTTP request or response is in
a format and encoding defined by the entity-header fields.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="entity-body"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
entity-body = *OCTET
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
An entity-body is only present in a message when a message-body is
present, as described in Section 3.3 of <xref target="Part1"/>. The entity-body is obtained
from the message-body by decoding any Transfer-Encoding that might
have been applied to ensure safe and proper transfer of the message.
</t>
<section title="Type" anchor="type">
<t>
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:
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
entity-body := Content-Encoding( Content-Type( data ) )
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Content-Type specifies the media type of the underlying data. Any HTTP/1.1
message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header
field defining the media type of that body, unless that information is
unknown. If the Content-Type header field is not present, it indicates that
the sender does not know the media type of the data; recipients MAY
either assume that it is "application/octet-stream" (<xref target="RFC2046"/>, Section 4.5.1)
or examine the content to determine its type.
</t>
<t>
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.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Entity Length" anchor="entity.length">
<t>
The entity-length of a message is the length of the message-body
before any transfer-codings have been applied. Section 3.4 of <xref target="Part1"/> defines
how the transfer-length of a message-body is determined.
</t>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Content Negotiation" anchor="content.negotiation">
<t>
HTTP responses include a representation which contains information for
interpretation, whether by a human user or for further processing.
Often, the server has different ways of representing the
same information; for example, in different formats, languages,
or using different character encodings.
</t>
<t>
HTTP clients and their users might have different or variable
capabilities, characteristics or preferences which would influence
which representation, among those available from the server,
would be best for the server to deliver. For this reason, HTTP
provides mechanisms for "content negotiation" -- a process of
allowing selection of a representation of a given resource,
when more than one is available.
</t>
<t>
This specification defines two patterns of content negotiation;
"server-driven", where the server selects the representation based
upon the client's stated preferences, and "agent-driven" negotiation,
where the server provides a list of representations for the client to
choose from, based upon their metadata. In addition, there are
other patterns: some applications use an "active content" pattern,
where the server returns active content which runs on the client
and, based on client available parameters, selects additional
resources to invoke. "Transparent Content Negotiation" (<xref target="RFC2295"/>)
has also been proposed.
</t>
<t>
These patterns are all widely used, and have trade-offs in applicability
and practicality. In particular, when the number of preferences or
capabilities to be expressed by a client are large (such as when many
different formats are supported by a user-agent), server-driven
negotiation becomes unwieldy, and may not be appropriate. Conversely,
when the number of representations to choose from is very large,
agent-driven negotiation may not be appropriate.
</t>
<t>
Note that in all cases, the supplier of representations has the
responsibility for determining which representations might be
considered to be the "same information".
</t>
<section title="Server-driven Negotiation" anchor="server-driven.negotiation">
<t>
If the selection of the best representation for a response is made by
an algorithm located at the server, it is called server-driven
negotiation. Selection is based on the available representations of
the response (the dimensions over which it can vary; e.g., language,
content-coding, etc.) and the contents of particular header fields in
the request message or on other information pertaining to the request
(such as the network address of the client).
</t>
<t>
Server-driven negotiation is advantageous when the algorithm for
selecting from among the available representations is difficult to
describe to the user agent, or when the server desires to send its
"best guess" to the client along with the first response (hoping to
avoid the round-trip delay of a subsequent request if the "best
guess" is good enough for the user). In order to improve the server's
guess, the user agent MAY include request header fields (Accept,
Accept-Language, Accept-Encoding, etc.) which describe its
preferences for such a response.
</t>
<t>
Server-driven negotiation has disadvantages:
<list style="numbers">
<t>
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?).
</t>
<t>
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 violation of the user's privacy.
</t>
<t>
It complicates the implementation of an origin server and the
algorithms for generating responses to a request.
</t>
<t>
It may limit a public cache's ability to use the same response
for multiple user's requests.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
HTTP/1.1 includes the following request-header fields for enabling
server-driven negotiation through description of user agent
capabilities and user preferences: Accept (<xref target="header.accept"/>), Accept-Charset
(<xref target="header.accept-charset"/>), Accept-Encoding (<xref target="header.accept-encoding"/>), Accept-Language
(<xref target="header.accept-language"/>), and User-Agent (Section 9.9 of <xref target="Part2"/>).
However, an origin server is not limited to these dimensions and MAY vary
the response based on any aspect of the request, including information
outside the request-header fields or within extension header fields
not defined by this specification.
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
Note: In practice, User-Agent based negotiation is fragile,
because new clients might not be recognized.
</t>
</list></t>
<t>
The Vary header field (Section 3.5 of <xref target="Part6"/>) can be used to express the parameters the
server uses to select a representation that is subject to server-driven
negotiation.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Agent-driven Negotiation" anchor="agent-driven.negotiation">
<t>
With agent-driven negotiation, selection of the best representation
for a response is performed by the user agent after receiving an
initial response from the origin server. Selection is based on a list
of the available representations of the response included within the
header fields or entity-body of the initial response, with each
representation identified by its own URI. Selection from among the
representations may be performed automatically (if the user agent is
capable of doing so) or manually by the user selecting from a
generated (possibly hypertext) menu.
</t>
<t>
Agent-driven 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.
</t>
<t>
Agent-driven negotiation suffers from the disadvantage of needing a
second request to obtain the best alternate representation. This
second request is only efficient when caching is used. In addition,
this specification does not define any mechanism for supporting
automatic selection, though it also does not prevent any such
mechanism from being developed as an extension and used within
HTTP/1.1.
</t>
<t>
This specification defines the 300 (Multiple Choices) and 406 (Not Acceptable)
status codes for enabling agent-driven negotiation when the server is
unwilling or unable to provide a varying response using server-driven
negotiation.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Header Field Definitions" anchor="header.fields">
<t>
This section defines the syntax and semantics of HTTP/1.1 header fields
related to the payload of messages.
</t>
<t>
For entity-header fields, both sender and recipient refer to either the
client or the server, depending on who sends and who receives the entity.
</t>
<section title="Accept" anchor="header.accept">
<iref primary="true" item="Accept header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Accept"/>
<t>
The "Accept" request-header field can be used by user agents to specify
response media types that are acceptable. Accept headers 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.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept-v"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="media-range"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="accept-params"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="accept-ext"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Accept = "Accept" ":" OWS Accept-v
Accept-v = #( media-range [ accept-params ] )
media-range = ( "*/*"
/ ( type "/" "*" )
/ ( type "/" subtype )
) *( OWS ";" OWS parameter )
accept-params = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue *( accept-ext )
accept-ext = OWS ";" OWS token
[ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) ]
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
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 MAY include media type
parameters that are applicable to that range.
</t>
<t>
Each media-range MAY be followed by one or more accept-params,
beginning with the "q" parameter for indicating a relative quality
factor. The first "q" parameter (if any) separates the media-range
parameter(s) from the accept-params. Quality factors allow the user
or user agent to indicate the relative degree of preference for that
media-range, using the qvalue scale from 0 to 1 (Section 6.4 of <xref target="Part1"/>). The
default value is q=1.
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
Note: Use of the "q" parameter name to separate media type
parameters from Accept extension parameters 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".
</t>
</list></t>
<t>
The example
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Accept: audio/*; q=0.2, audio/basic
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
SHOULD be interpreted as "I prefer audio/basic, but send me any audio
type if it is the best available after an 80% mark-down in quality."
</t>
<t>
If no Accept header field is present, then it is assumed that the
client accepts all media types. If an Accept header field is present,
and if the server cannot send a response which is acceptable
according to the combined Accept field value, then the server SHOULD
send a 406 (Not Acceptable) response.
</t>
<t>
A more elaborate example is
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Accept: text/plain; q=0.5, text/html,
text/x-dvi; q=0.8, text/x-c
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Verbally, this would be interpreted as "text/html and text/x-c are
the preferred media types, but if they do not exist, then send the
text/x-dvi entity, and if that does not exist, send the text/plain
entity."
</t>
<t>
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,
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Accept: text/*, text/html, text/html;level=1, */*
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
have the following precedence:
<list style="numbers">
<t>text/html;level=1</t>
<t>text/html</t>
<t>text/*</t>
<t>*/*</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
The media type quality factor associated with a given type is
determined by finding the media range with the highest precedence
which matches that type. For example,
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Accept: text/*;q=0.3, text/html;q=0.7, text/html;level=1,
text/html;level=2;q=0.4, */*;q=0.5
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
would cause the following values to be associated:
</t>
<texttable align="left">
<ttcol>Media Type</ttcol><ttcol>Quality Value</ttcol>
<c>text/html;level=1</c> <c>1</c>
<c>text/html</c> <c>0.7</c>
<c>text/plain</c> <c>0.3</c>
<c>image/jpeg</c> <c>0.5</c>
<c>text/html;level=2</c> <c>0.4</c>
<c>text/html;level=3</c> <c>0.7</c>
</texttable>
<t>
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 which cannot interact with other rendering agents,
this default set ought to be configurable by the user.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Accept-Charset" anchor="header.accept-charset">
<iref primary="true" item="Accept-Charset header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Accept-Charset"/>
<t>
The "Accept-Charset" request-header field can be used by user agents to
indicate what response character sets are acceptable. This field allows
clients capable of understanding more comprehensive or special-purpose
character sets to signal that capability to a server which is capable of
representing documents in those character sets.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept-Charset"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept-Charset-v"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Accept-Charset = "Accept-Charset" ":" OWS
Accept-Charset-v
Accept-Charset-v = 1#( ( charset / "*" )
[ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Character set values are described in <xref target="character.sets"/>. Each charset MAY
be given an associated quality value which represents the user's
preference for that charset. The default value is q=1. An example is
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Accept-Charset: iso-8859-5, unicode-1-1;q=0.8
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
The special value "*", if present in the Accept-Charset field,
matches every character set (including ISO-8859-1) which is not
mentioned elsewhere in the Accept-Charset field. If no "*" is present
in an Accept-Charset field, then all character sets not explicitly
mentioned get a quality value of 0, except for ISO-8859-1, which gets
a quality value of 1 if not explicitly mentioned.
</t>
<t>
If no Accept-Charset header is present, the default is that any
character set is acceptable. If an Accept-Charset header is present,
and if the server cannot send a response which is acceptable
according to the Accept-Charset header, then the server SHOULD send
an error response with the 406 (Not Acceptable) status code, though
the sending of an unacceptable response is also allowed.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Accept-Encoding" anchor="header.accept-encoding">
<iref primary="true" item="Accept-Encoding header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Accept-Encoding"/>
<t>
The "Accept-Encoding" request-header field can be used by user agents to
indicate what response content-codings (<xref target="content.codings"/>)
are acceptable in the response.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept-Encoding"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept-Encoding-v"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="codings"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Accept-Encoding = "Accept-Encoding" ":" OWS
Accept-Encoding-v
Accept-Encoding-v =
#( codings [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
codings = ( content-coding / "*" )
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Each codings value MAY be given an associated quality value which
represents the preference for that encoding. The default value is q=1.
</t>
<t>
Examples of its use are:
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
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
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
A server tests whether a content-coding is acceptable, according to
an Accept-Encoding field, using these rules:
<list style="numbers">
<t>If the content-coding is one of the content-codings listed in
the Accept-Encoding field, then it is acceptable, unless it is
accompanied by a qvalue of 0. (As defined in Section 6.4 of <xref target="Part1"/>, a
qvalue of 0 means "not acceptable.")</t>
<t>The special "*" symbol in an Accept-Encoding field matches any
available content-coding not explicitly listed in the header
field.</t>
<t>If multiple content-codings are acceptable, then the acceptable
content-coding with the highest non-zero qvalue is preferred.</t>
<t>The "identity" content-coding is always acceptable, unless
specifically refused because the Accept-Encoding field includes
"identity;q=0", or because the field includes "*;q=0" and does
not explicitly include the "identity" content-coding. If the
Accept-Encoding field-value is empty, then only the "identity"
encoding is acceptable.</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
If an Accept-Encoding field is present in a request, and if the
server cannot send a response which is acceptable according to the
Accept-Encoding header, then the server SHOULD send an error response
with the 406 (Not Acceptable) status code.
</t>
<t>
If no Accept-Encoding field is present in a request, the server MAY
assume that the client will accept any content coding. In this case,
if "identity" is one of the available content-codings, then the
server SHOULD use the "identity" content-coding, unless it has
additional information that a different content-coding is meaningful
to the client.
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
Note: If the request does not include an Accept-Encoding field,
and if the "identity" content-coding is unavailable, then
content-codings commonly understood by HTTP/1.0 clients (i.e.,
"gzip" and "compress") are preferred; some older clients
improperly display messages sent with other content-codings. The
server might also make this decision based on information about
the particular user-agent or client.
</t>
</list></t>
<t><list>
<t>
Note: Most HTTP/1.0 applications do not recognize or obey qvalues
associated with content-codings. This means that qvalues will not
work and are not permitted with x-gzip or x-compress.
</t>
</list></t>
</section>
<section title="Accept-Language" anchor="header.accept-language">
<iref primary="true" item="Accept-Language header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Accept-Language"/>
<t>
The "Accept-Language" request-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 <xref target="language.tags"/>.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept-Language"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Accept-Language-v"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="language-range"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Accept-Language = "Accept-Language" ":" OWS
Accept-Language-v
Accept-Language-v =
1#( language-range [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
language-range =
<language-range, defined in [RFC4647], Section 2.1>
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Each language-range can be given an associated quality value which
represents an estimate of the user's preference for the languages
specified by that range. The quality value defaults to "q=1". For
example,
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Accept-Language: da, en-gb;q=0.8, en;q=0.7
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
would mean: "I prefer Danish, but will accept British English and
other types of English."
(see also Section 2.3 of <xref target="RFC4647"/>)
</t>
<t>
For matching, Section 3 of <xref target="RFC4647"/> defines
several matching schemes. Implementations can offer the most appropriate
matching scheme for their requirements.
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
Note: The "Basic Filtering" scheme (<xref target="RFC4647"/>, Section 3.3.1) is identical to the matching scheme that was
previously defined in Section 14.4 of <xref target="RFC2616"/>.
</t>
</list></t>
<t>
It might be contrary to the privacy expectations of the user to send
an Accept-Language header with the complete linguistic preferences of
the user in every request. For a discussion of this issue, see
<xref target="privacy.issues.connected.to.accept.headers"/>.
</t>
<t>
As intelligibility is highly dependent on the individual user, it is
recommended that client applications make the choice of linguistic
preference available to the user. If the choice is not made
available, then the Accept-Language header field MUST NOT be given in
the request.
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
Note: When making the choice of linguistic preference available to
the user, we remind implementors of the fact that users are not
familiar with the details of language matching as described above,
and should provide appropriate guidance. As an 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 get the
best matching behavior.
</t>
</list></t>
</section>
<section title="Content-Encoding" anchor="header.content-encoding">
<iref primary="true" item="Content-Encoding header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Content-Encoding"/>
<t>
The "Content-Encoding" entity-header field indicates what content-codings
have been applied to the entity-body, and thus what decoding mechanisms
must be applied in order to obtain the media-type referenced by the
Content-Type header field. Content-Encoding is primarily used to allow a
document to be compressed without losing the identity of its underlying
media type.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Encoding"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Encoding-v"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Content-Encoding = "Content-Encoding" ":" OWS Content-Encoding-v
Content-Encoding-v = 1#content-coding
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Content codings are defined in <xref target="content.codings"/>. An example of its use is
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Content-Encoding: gzip
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
The content-coding is a characteristic of the entity identified by
the request-target. Typically, the entity-body is stored with this
encoding and is only decoded before rendering or analogous usage.
However, a non-transparent proxy MAY modify the content-coding if the
new coding is known to be acceptable to the recipient, unless the
"no-transform" cache-control directive is present in the message.
</t>
<t>
If the content-coding of an entity is not "identity", then the
response MUST include a Content-Encoding entity-header (<xref target="header.content-encoding"/>)
that lists the non-identity content-coding(s) used.
</t>
<t>
If the content-coding of an entity in a request message is not
acceptable to the origin server, the server SHOULD respond with a
status code of 415 (Unsupported Media Type).
</t>
<t>
If multiple encodings have been applied to an entity, the content
codings MUST be listed in the order in which they were applied.
Additional information about the encoding parameters MAY be provided
by other entity-header fields not defined by this specification.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Content-Language" anchor="header.content-language">
<iref primary="true" item="Content-Language header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Content-Language"/>
<t>
The "Content-Language" entity-header field describes the natural
language(s) of the intended audience for the entity. Note that this might
not be equivalent to all the languages used within the entity-body.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Language"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Language-v"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Content-Language = "Content-Language" ":" OWS Content-Language-v
Content-Language-v = 1#language-tag
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Language tags are defined in <xref target="language.tags"/>. The primary purpose of
Content-Language is to allow a user to identify and differentiate
entities according to the user's own preferred language. Thus, if the
body content is intended only for a Danish-literate audience, the
appropriate field is
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Content-Language: da
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
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.
</t>
<t>
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
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Content-Language: mi, en
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
However, just because multiple languages are present within an entity
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".
</t>
<t>
Content-Language MAY be applied to any media type -- it is not
limited to textual documents.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Content-Location" anchor="header.content-location">
<iref primary="true" item="Content-Location header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Content-Location"/>
<t>
The "Content-Location" entity-header field is used to supply a URI for the
entity in the message when it is accessible from a location separate from
the requested resource's URI.
</t>
<t>
A server SHOULD provide a Content-Location for the variant corresponding
to the response entity, especially in the case where a resource has multiple
entities associated with it, and those entities actually have separate
locations by which they might be individually accessed, the server SHOULD
provide a Content-Location for the particular variant which is returned.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Location"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Location-v"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Content-Location = "Content-Location" ":" OWS
Content-Location-v
Content-Location-v =
absolute-URI / partial-URI
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
The Content-Location value is not a replacement for the original
requested URI; it is only a statement of the location of the resource
corresponding to this particular entity at the time of the request.
Future requests MAY specify the Content-Location URI as the request-target
if the desire is to identify the source of that particular
entity.
</t>
<t>
Section 6.1 of <xref target="Part2"/> describes how clients may process the Content-Location header field.
</t>
<t>
A cache cannot assume that an entity with a Content-Location
different from the URI used to retrieve it can be used to respond to
later requests on that Content-Location URI. However, the Content-Location
can be used to differentiate between multiple entities
retrieved from a single requested resource, as described in Section 2.6 of <xref target="Part6"/>.
</t>
<t>
If the Content-Location is a relative URI, the relative URI is
interpreted relative to the request-target.
</t>
<t>
The meaning of the Content-Location header in requests is
undefined; servers are free to ignore it in those cases.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Content-MD5" anchor="header.content-md5">
<iref primary="true" item="Content-MD5 header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Content-MD5"/>
<t>
The "Content-MD5" entity-header field, as defined in <xref target="RFC1864"/>, is
an MD5 digest of the entity-body that provides an end-to-end message
integrity check (MIC) of the entity-body. Note that a MIC is good for
detecting accidental modification of the entity-body in transit, but is not
proof against malicious attacks.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-MD5"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-MD5-v"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Content-MD5 = "Content-MD5" ":" OWS Content-MD5-v
Content-MD5-v = <base64 of 128 bit MD5 digest as per [RFC1864]>
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
The Content-MD5 header field MAY be generated by an origin server or
client to function as an integrity check of the entity-body. Only
origin servers or clients MAY generate the Content-MD5 header field;
proxies and gateways MUST NOT generate it, as this would defeat its
value as an end-to-end integrity check. Any recipient of the entity-body,
including gateways and proxies, MAY check that the digest value
in this header field matches that of the entity-body as received.
</t>
<t>
The MD5 digest is computed based on the content of the entity-body,
including any content-coding that has been applied, but not including
any transfer-encoding applied to the message-body. If the message is
received with a transfer-encoding, that encoding MUST be removed
prior to checking the Content-MD5 value against the received entity.
</t>
<t>
This has the result that the digest is computed on the octets of the
entity-body exactly as, and in the order that, they would be sent if
no transfer-encoding were being applied.
</t>
<t>
HTTP extends RFC 1864 to permit the digest to be computed for MIME
composite media-types (e.g., multipart/* and message/rfc822), but
this does not change how the digest is computed as defined in the
preceding paragraph.
</t>
<t>
There are several consequences of this. The entity-body for composite
types MAY contain many body-parts, each with its own MIME and HTTP
headers (including Content-MD5, Content-Transfer-Encoding, and
Content-Encoding headers). If a body-part has a Content-Transfer-Encoding
or Content-Encoding header, it is assumed that the content
of the body-part has had the encoding applied, and the body-part is
included in the Content-MD5 digest as is -- i.e., after the
application. The Transfer-Encoding header field is not allowed within
body-parts.
</t>
<t>
Conversion of all line breaks to CRLF MUST NOT be done before
computing or checking the digest: the line break convention used in
the text actually transmitted MUST be left unaltered when computing
the digest.
</t>
<t><list>
<t>
Note: While the definition of Content-MD5 is exactly the same for
HTTP as in RFC 1864 for MIME entity-bodies, there are several ways
in which the application of Content-MD5 to HTTP entity-bodies
differs from its application to MIME entity-bodies. One is that
HTTP, unlike MIME, does not use Content-Transfer-Encoding, and
does use Transfer-Encoding and Content-Encoding. Another is that
HTTP more frequently uses binary content types than MIME, so it is
worth noting that, in such cases, the byte order used to compute
the digest is the transmission byte order defined for the type.
Lastly, HTTP allows transmission of text types with any of several
line break conventions and not just the canonical form using CRLF.
</t>
</list></t>
</section>
<section title="Content-Type" anchor="header.content-type">
<iref primary="true" item="Content-Type header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="Content-Type"/>
<t>
The "Content-Type" entity-header field indicates the media type of the
entity-body. In the case of responses to the HEAD method, the media type is
that which would have been sent had the request been a GET.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Type"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="Content-Type-v"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
Content-Type = "Content-Type" ":" OWS Content-Type-v
Content-Type-v = media-type
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Media types are defined in <xref target="media.types"/>. An example of the field is
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-4
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
Further discussion of methods for identifying the media type of an
entity is provided in <xref target="type"/>.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="IANA Considerations" anchor="IANA.considerations">
<section title="Message Header Registration" anchor="message.header.registration">
<t>
The Message Header Registry located at <eref target="http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/message-header-index.html"/> should be updated
with the permanent registrations below (see <xref target="RFC3864"/>):
</t>
<!--AUTOGENERATED FROM extract-header-defs.xslt, do not edit manually-->
<texttable align="left" suppress-title="true" anchor="iana.header.registration.table">
<ttcol>Header Field Name</ttcol>
<ttcol>Protocol</ttcol>
<ttcol>Status</ttcol>
<ttcol>Reference</ttcol>
<c>Accept</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.accept"/>
</c>
<c>Accept-Charset</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.accept-charset"/>
</c>
<c>Accept-Encoding</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.accept-encoding"/>
</c>
<c>Accept-Language</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.accept-language"/>
</c>
<c>Content-Disposition</c>
<c>http</c>
<c/>
<c>
<xref target="content-disposition"/>
</c>
<c>Content-Encoding</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.content-encoding"/>
</c>
<c>Content-Language</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.content-language"/>
</c>
<c>Content-Location</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.content-location"/>
</c>
<c>Content-MD5</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.content-md5"/>
</c>
<c>Content-Type</c>
<c>http</c>
<c>standard</c>
<c>
<xref target="header.content-type"/>
</c>
<c>MIME-Version</c>
<c>http</c>
<c/>
<c>
<xref target="mime-version"/>
</c>
</texttable>
<!--(END)-->
<t>
The change controller is: "IETF (iesg@ietf.org) - Internet Engineering Task Force".
</t>
</section>
<section title="Content Coding Registry" anchor="content.coding.registration">
<t>
The registration procedure for HTTP Content Codings is now defined
by <xref target="content.coding.registry"/> of this document.
</t>
<t>
The HTTP Content Codings Registry located at <eref target="http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters"/>
should be updated with the registration below:
</t>
<texttable align="left" suppress-title="true" anchor="iana.content.coding.registration.table">
<ttcol>Name</ttcol>
<ttcol>Description</ttcol>
<ttcol>Reference</ttcol>
<c>compress</c>
<c>UNIX "compress" program method</c>
<c>
Section 6.2.2.1 of <xref target="Part1"/>
</c>
<c>deflate</c>
<c>"zlib" format <xref target="RFC1950"/> with "deflate" compression</c>
<c>
Section 6.2.2.2 of <xref target="Part1"/>
</c>
<c>gzip</c>
<c>Same as GNU zip <xref target="RFC1952"/></c>
<c>
Section 6.2.2.3 of <xref target="Part1"/>
</c>
<c>identity</c>
<c>No transformation</c>
<c>
<xref target="content.codings"/>
</c>
</texttable>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Security Considerations" anchor="security.considerations">
<t>
This section is meant to inform application developers, information
providers, and users of the security limitations in HTTP/1.1 as
described by this document. The discussion does not include
definitive solutions to the problems revealed, though it does make
some suggestions for reducing security risks.
</t>
<section title="Privacy Issues Connected to Accept Headers" anchor="privacy.issues.connected.to.accept.headers">
<t>
Accept request-headers can reveal information about the user to all
servers which are accessed. The Accept-Language header in particular
can reveal information the user would consider to be of a private
nature, because the understanding of particular languages is often
strongly correlated to the membership of a particular ethnic group.
User agents which offer the option to configure the contents of an
Accept-Language header to be sent in every request are strongly
encouraged to let the configuration process include a message which
makes the user aware of the loss of privacy involved.
</t>
<t>
An approach that limits the loss of privacy would be for a user agent
to omit the sending of Accept-Language headers by default, and to ask
the user whether or not to start sending Accept-Language headers to a
server if it detects, by looking for any Vary response-header fields
generated by the server, that such sending could improve the quality
of service.
</t>
<t>
Elaborate user-customized accept header fields sent in every request,
in particular if these include quality values, can be used by servers
as relatively reliable and long-lived user identifiers. Such user
identifiers would allow content providers to do click-trail tracking,
and would allow collaborating content providers to match cross-server
click-trails or form submissions of individual users. Note that for
many users not behind a proxy, the network address of the host
running the user agent will also serve as a long-lived user
identifier. In environments where proxies are used to enhance
privacy, user agents ought to be conservative in offering accept
header configuration options to end users. As an extreme privacy
measure, proxies could filter the accept headers in relayed requests.
General purpose user agents which provide a high degree of header
configurability SHOULD warn users about the loss of privacy which can
be involved.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Content-Disposition Issues" anchor="content-disposition.issues">
<t>
<xref target="RFC2183"/>, from which the often implemented Content-Disposition
(see <xref target="content-disposition"/>) header in HTTP is derived, has a number of very
serious security considerations. Content-Disposition is not part of
the HTTP standard, but since it is widely implemented, we are
documenting its use and risks for implementors. See Section 5 of <xref target="RFC2183"/>
for details.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Acknowledgments" anchor="ack">
</section>
</middle>
<back>
<references title="Normative References">
<reference anchor="ISO-8859-1">
<front>
<title>
Information technology -- 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets -- Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1
</title>
<author>
<organization>International Organization for Standardization</organization>
</author>
<date year="1998"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="ISO/IEC" value="8859-1:1998"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="Part1">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.1">HTTP/1.1, part 1: URIs, Connections, and Message Parsing</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="Day Software">Day Software</organization>
<address><email>fielding@gbiv.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="Jim Gettys">
<organization>One Laptop per Child</organization>
<address><email>jg@laptop.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="Jeffrey C. Mogul">
<organization abbrev="HP">Hewlett-Packard Company</organization>
<address><email>JeffMogul@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Frystyk" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>henrikn@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="Larry Masinter">
<organization abbrev="Adobe Systems">Adobe Systems, Incorporated</organization>
<address><email>LMM@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Leach" fullname="Paul J. Leach">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>paulle@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization abbrev="W3C/MIT">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="Y." surname="Lafon" fullname="Yves Lafon" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="W3C">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>ylafon@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J. F." surname="Reschke" fullname="Julian F. Reschke" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="greenbytes">greenbytes GmbH</organization>
<address><email>julian.reschke@greenbytes.de</email></address>
</author>
<date month="March" year="2010"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-09"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="Part2">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.1">HTTP/1.1, part 2: Message Semantics</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="Day Software">Day Software</organization>
<address><email>fielding@gbiv.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="Jim Gettys">
<organization>One Laptop per Child</organization>
<address><email>jg@laptop.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="Jeffrey C. Mogul">
<organization abbrev="HP">Hewlett-Packard Company</organization>
<address><email>JeffMogul@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Frystyk" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>henrikn@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="Larry Masinter">
<organization abbrev="Adobe Systems">Adobe Systems, Incorporated</organization>
<address><email>LMM@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Leach" fullname="Paul J. Leach">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>paulle@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization abbrev="W3C/MIT">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="Y." surname="Lafon" fullname="Yves Lafon" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="W3C">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>ylafon@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J. F." surname="Reschke" fullname="Julian F. Reschke" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="greenbytes">greenbytes GmbH</organization>
<address><email>julian.reschke@greenbytes.de</email></address>
</author>
<date month="March" year="2010"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-09"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="Part4">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.1">HTTP/1.1, part 4: Conditional Requests</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="Day Software">Day Software</organization>
<address><email>fielding@gbiv.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="Jim Gettys">
<organization>One Laptop per Child</organization>
<address><email>jg@laptop.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="Jeffrey C. Mogul">
<organization abbrev="HP">Hewlett-Packard Company</organization>
<address><email>JeffMogul@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Frystyk" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>henrikn@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="Larry Masinter">
<organization abbrev="Adobe Systems">Adobe Systems, Incorporated</organization>
<address><email>LMM@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Leach" fullname="Paul J. Leach">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>paulle@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization abbrev="W3C/MIT">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="Y." surname="Lafon" fullname="Yves Lafon" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="W3C">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>ylafon@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J. F." surname="Reschke" fullname="Julian F. Reschke" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="greenbytes">greenbytes GmbH</organization>
<address><email>julian.reschke@greenbytes.de</email></address>
</author>
<date month="March" year="2010"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-ietf-httpbis-p4-conditional-09"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="Part5">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.1">HTTP/1.1, part 5: Range Requests and Partial Responses</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="Day Software">Day Software</organization>
<address><email>fielding@gbiv.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="Jim Gettys">
<organization>One Laptop per Child</organization>
<address><email>jg@laptop.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="Jeffrey C. Mogul">
<organization abbrev="HP">Hewlett-Packard Company</organization>
<address><email>JeffMogul@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Frystyk" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>henrikn@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="Larry Masinter">
<organization abbrev="Adobe Systems">Adobe Systems, Incorporated</organization>
<address><email>LMM@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Leach" fullname="Paul J. Leach">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>paulle@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization abbrev="W3C/MIT">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="Y." surname="Lafon" fullname="Yves Lafon" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="W3C">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>ylafon@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J. F." surname="Reschke" fullname="Julian F. Reschke" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="greenbytes">greenbytes GmbH</organization>
<address><email>julian.reschke@greenbytes.de</email></address>
</author>
<date month="March" year="2010"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-ietf-httpbis-p5-range-09"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="Part6">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.1">HTTP/1.1, part 6: Caching</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="Day Software">Day Software</organization>
<address><email>fielding@gbiv.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="Jim Gettys">
<organization>One Laptop per Child</organization>
<address><email>jg@laptop.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="Jeffrey C. Mogul">
<organization abbrev="HP">Hewlett-Packard Company</organization>
<address><email>JeffMogul@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Frystyk" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>henrikn@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="Larry Masinter">
<organization abbrev="Adobe Systems">Adobe Systems, Incorporated</organization>
<address><email>LMM@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Leach" fullname="Paul J. Leach">
<organization abbrev="Microsoft">Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>paulle@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization abbrev="W3C/MIT">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="Y." surname="Lafon" fullname="Yves Lafon" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="W3C">World Wide Web Consortium</organization>
<address><email>ylafon@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Nottingham" fullname="Mark Nottingham" role="editor">
<address><email>mnot@mnot.net</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J. F." surname="Reschke" fullname="Julian F. Reschke" role="editor">
<organization abbrev="greenbytes">greenbytes GmbH</organization>
<address><email>julian.reschke@greenbytes.de</email></address>
</author>
<date month="March" year="2010"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-ietf-httpbis-p6-cache-09"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC1864">
<front>
<title abbrev="Content-MD5 Header Field">The Content-MD5 Header Field</title>
<author initials="J." surname="Myers" fullname="John G. Myers">
<organization>Carnegie Mellon University</organization>
<address><email>jgm+@cmu.edu</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Rose" fullname="Marshall T. Rose">
<organization>Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.</organization>
<address><email>mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us</email></address>
</author>
<date month="October" year="1995"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="1864"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC1950">
<front>
<title>ZLIB Compressed Data Format Specification version 3.3</title>
<author initials="L.P." surname="Deutsch" fullname="L. Peter Deutsch">
<organization>Aladdin Enterprises</organization>
<address><email>ghost@aladdin.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J-L." surname="Gailly" fullname="Jean-Loup Gailly"/>
<date month="May" year="1996"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="1950"/>
<annotation>
RFC 1950 is an Informational RFC, thus it may be less stable than
this specification. On the other hand, this downward reference was
present since the publication of RFC 2068 in 1997 (<xref target="RFC2068"/>),
therefore it is unlikely to cause problems in practice. See also
<xref target="BCP97"/>.
</annotation>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC1952">
<front>
<title>GZIP file format specification version 4.3</title>
<author initials="P." surname="Deutsch" fullname="L. Peter Deutsch">
<organization>Aladdin Enterprises</organization>
<address><email>ghost@aladdin.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J-L." surname="Gailly" fullname="Jean-Loup Gailly">
<address><email>gzip@prep.ai.mit.edu</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Adler" fullname="Mark Adler">
<address><email>madler@alumni.caltech.edu</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="L.P." surname="Deutsch" fullname="L. Peter Deutsch">
<address><email>ghost@aladdin.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="G." surname="Randers-Pehrson" fullname="Glenn Randers-Pehrson">
<address><email>randeg@alumni.rpi.edu</email></address>
</author>
<date month="May" year="1996"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="1952"/>
<annotation>
RFC 1952 is an Informational RFC, thus it may be less stable than
this specification. On the other hand, this downward reference was
present since the publication of RFC 2068 in 1997 (<xref target="RFC2068"/>),
therefore it is unlikely to cause problems in practice. See also
<xref target="BCP97"/>.
</annotation>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2045">
<front>
<title abbrev="Internet Message Bodies">Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies</title>
<author initials="N." surname="Freed" fullname="Ned Freed">
<organization>Innosoft International, Inc.</organization>
<address><email>ned@innosoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="N.S." surname="Borenstein" fullname="Nathaniel S. Borenstein">
<organization>First Virtual Holdings</organization>
<address><email>nsb@nsb.fv.com</email></address>
</author>
<date month="November" year="1996"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2045"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2046">
<front>
<title abbrev="Media Types">Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types</title>
<author initials="N." surname="Freed" fullname="Ned Freed">
<organization>Innosoft International, Inc.</organization>
<address><email>ned@innosoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="N." surname="Borenstein" fullname="Nathaniel S. Borenstein">
<organization>First Virtual Holdings</organization>
<address><email>nsb@nsb.fv.com</email></address>
</author>
<date month="November" year="1996"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2046"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2119">
<front>
<title>Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels</title>
<author initials="S." surname="Bradner" fullname="Scott Bradner">
<organization>Harvard University</organization>
<address><email>sob@harvard.edu</email></address>
</author>
<date month="March" year="1997"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="14"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2119"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC4647">
<front>
<title>Matching of Language Tags</title>
<author initials="A." surname="Phillips" fullname="Addison Phillips" role="editor">
<organization>Yahoo! Inc.</organization>
<address><email>addison@inter-locale.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Davis" fullname="Mark Davis" role="editor">
<organization>Google</organization>
<address><email>mark.davis@macchiato.com</email></address>
</author>
<date year="2006" month="September"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="47"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="4647"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC5234">
<front>
<title abbrev="ABNF for Syntax Specifications">Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF</title>
<author initials="D." surname="Crocker" fullname="Dave Crocker" role="editor">
<organization>Brandenburg InternetWorking</organization>
<address>
<email>dcrocker@bbiw.net</email>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Overell" fullname="Paul Overell">
<organization>THUS plc.</organization>
<address>
<email>paul.overell@thus.net</email>
</address>
</author>
<date month="January" year="2008"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="STD" value="68"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="5234"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC5646">
<front>
<title>Tags for Identifying Languages</title>
<author initials="A." surname="Phillips" fullname="Addison Phillips" role="editor">
<organization>Lab126</organization>
<address><email>addison@inter-locale.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Davis" fullname="Mark Davis" role="editor">
<organization>Google</organization>
<address><email>mark.davis@google.com</email></address>
</author>
<date month="September" year="2009"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="47"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="5646"/>
</reference>
</references>
<references title="Informative References">
<reference anchor="RFC1945">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.0">Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0</title>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization>MIT, Laboratory for Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="R.T." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding">
<organization>University of California, Irvine, Department of Information and Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>fielding@ics.uci.edu</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H.F." surname="Nielsen" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization>W3 Consortium, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>frystyk@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<date month="May" year="1996"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="1945"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2049">
<front>
<title abbrev="MIME Conformance">Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Five: Conformance Criteria and Examples</title>
<author initials="N." surname="Freed" fullname="Ned Freed">
<organization>Innosoft International, Inc.</organization>
<address><email>ned@innosoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="N.S." surname="Borenstein" fullname="Nathaniel S. Borenstein">
<organization>First Virtual Holdings</organization>
<address><email>nsb@nsb.fv.com</email></address>
</author>
<date month="November" year="1996"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2049"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2068">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP/1.1">Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="Roy T. Fielding">
<organization>University of California, Irvine, Department of Information and Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>fielding@ics.uci.edu</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="Jim Gettys">
<organization>MIT Laboratory for Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>jg@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="Jeffrey C. Mogul">
<organization>Digital Equipment Corporation, Western Research Laboratory</organization>
<address><email>mogul@wrl.dec.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Nielsen" fullname="Henrik Frystyk Nielsen">
<organization>MIT Laboratory for Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>frystyk@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="Tim Berners-Lee">
<organization>MIT Laboratory for Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<date month="January" year="1997"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2068"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2076">
<front>
<title abbrev="Internet Message Headers">Common Internet Message Headers</title>
<author initials="J." surname="Palme" fullname="Jacob Palme">
<organization>Stockholm University/KTH</organization>
<address><email>jpalme@dsv.su.se</email></address>
</author>
<date month="February" year="1997"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2076"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2183">
<front>
<title abbrev="Content-Disposition">Communicating Presentation Information in Internet Messages: The Content-Disposition Header Field</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Troost" fullname="Rens Troost">
<organization>New Century Systems</organization>
<address><email>rens@century.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="S." surname="Dorner" fullname="Steve Dorner">
<organization>QUALCOMM Incorporated</organization>
<address><email>sdorner@qualcomm.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="K." surname="Moore" fullname="Keith Moore">
<organization>Department of Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>moore@cs.utk.edu</email></address>
</author>
<date month="August" year="1997"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2183"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2277">
<front>
<title abbrev="Charset Policy">IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages</title>
<author initials="H.T." surname="Alvestrand" fullname="Harald Tveit Alvestrand">
<organization>UNINETT</organization>
<address><email>Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no</email></address>
</author>
<date month="January" year="1998"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="18"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2277"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2295">
<front>
<title abbrev="HTTP Content Negotiation">Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP</title>
<author initials="K." surname="Holtman" fullname="Koen Holtman">
<organization>Technische Universiteit Eindhoven</organization>
<address>
<email>koen@win.tue.nl</email>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="A.H." surname="Mutz" fullname="Andrew H. Mutz">
<organization>Hewlett-Packard Company</organization>
<address>
<email>mutz@hpl.hp.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<date year="1998" month="March"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2295"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2388">
<front>
<title abbrev="multipart/form-data">Returning Values from Forms: multipart/form-data</title>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="Larry Masinter">
<organization>Xerox Palo Alto Research Center</organization>
<address><email>masinter@parc.xerox.com</email></address>
</author>
<date year="1998" month="August"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2388"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2557">
<front>
<title abbrev="MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents">MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)</title>
<author initials="F." surname="Palme" fullname="Jacob Palme">
<organization>Stockholm University and KTH</organization>
<address><email>jpalme@dsv.su.se</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="A." surname="Hopmann" fullname="Alex Hopmann">
<organization>Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>alexhop@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="N." surname="Shelness" fullname="Nick Shelness">
<organization>Lotus Development Corporation</organization>
<address><email>Shelness@lotus.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="E." surname="Stefferud" fullname="Einar Stefferud">
<address><email>stef@nma.com</email></address>
</author>
<date year="1999" month="March"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2557"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC2616">
<front>
<title>Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1</title>
<author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="R. Fielding">
<organization>University of California, Irvine</organization>
<address><email>fielding@ics.uci.edu</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Gettys" fullname="J. Gettys">
<organization>W3C</organization>
<address><email>jg@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="J. Mogul">
<organization>Compaq Computer Corporation</organization>
<address><email>mogul@wrl.dec.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Frystyk" fullname="H. Frystyk">
<organization>MIT Laboratory for Computer Science</organization>
<address><email>frystyk@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="L. Masinter">
<organization>Xerox Corporation</organization>
<address><email>masinter@parc.xerox.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Leach" fullname="P. Leach">
<organization>Microsoft Corporation</organization>
<address><email>paulle@microsoft.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="T. Berners-Lee">
<organization>W3C</organization>
<address><email>timbl@w3.org</email></address>
</author>
<date month="June" year="1999"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="2616"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC3629">
<front>
<title>UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646</title>
<author initials="F." surname="Yergeau" fullname="F. Yergeau">
<organization>Alis Technologies</organization>
<address><email>fyergeau@alis.com</email></address>
</author>
<date month="November" year="2003"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="3629"/>
<seriesInfo name="STD" value="63"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC3864">
<front>
<title>Registration Procedures for Message Header Fields</title>
<author initials="G." surname="Klyne" fullname="G. Klyne">
<organization>Nine by Nine</organization>
<address><email>GK-IETF@ninebynine.org</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Nottingham" fullname="M. Nottingham">
<organization>BEA Systems</organization>
<address><email>mnot@pobox.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Mogul" fullname="J. Mogul">
<organization>HP Labs</organization>
<address><email>JeffMogul@acm.org</email></address>
</author>
<date year="2004" month="September"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="90"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="3864"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC4288">
<front>
<title>Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures</title>
<author initials="N." surname="Freed" fullname="N. Freed">
<organization>Sun Microsystems</organization>
<address>
<email>ned.freed@mrochek.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="J." surname="Klensin" fullname="J. Klensin">
<address>
<email>klensin+ietf@jck.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<date year="2005" month="December"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="13"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="4288"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC5226">
<front>
<title>Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs</title>
<author initials="T." surname="Narten" fullname="T. Narten">
<organization>IBM</organization>
<address><email>narten@us.ibm.com</email></address>
</author>
<author initials="H." surname="Alvestrand" fullname="H. Alvestrand">
<organization>Google</organization>
<address><email>Harald@Alvestrand.no</email></address>
</author>
<date year="2008" month="May"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="26"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="5226"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="RFC5322">
<front>
<title>Internet Message Format</title>
<author initials="P." surname="Resnick" fullname="P. Resnick">
<organization>Qualcomm Incorporated</organization>
</author>
<date year="2008" month="October"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="5322"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="BCP97">
<front>
<title>Handling Normative References to Standards-Track Documents</title>
<author initials="J." surname="Klensin" fullname="J. Klensin">
<address>
<email>klensin+ietf@jck.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<author initials="S." surname="Hartman" fullname="S. Hartman">
<organization>MIT</organization>
<address>
<email>hartmans-ietf@mit.edu</email>
</address>
</author>
<date year="2007" month="June"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="BCP" value="97"/>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="4897"/>
</reference>
</references>
<section title="Differences Between HTTP Entities and RFC 2045 Entities" anchor="differences.between.http.entities.and.rfc.2045.entities">
<t>
HTTP/1.1 uses many of the constructs defined for Internet Mail (<xref target="RFC5322"/>) and the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME <xref target="RFC2045"/>) to
allow entities to be transmitted in an open variety of
representations and with extensible mechanisms. However, RFC 2045
discusses mail, and HTTP has a few features that are different from
those described in RFC 2045. These differences were carefully chosen
to optimize performance over binary connections, to allow greater
freedom in the use of new media types, to make date comparisons
easier, and to acknowledge the practice of some early HTTP servers
and clients.
</t>
<t>
This appendix describes specific areas where HTTP differs from RFC
2045. Proxies and gateways to strict MIME environments SHOULD be
aware of these differences and provide the appropriate conversions
where necessary. Proxies and gateways from MIME environments to HTTP
also need to be aware of the differences because some conversions
might be required.
</t>
<section title="MIME-Version" anchor="mime-version">
<iref primary="true" item="MIME-Version header"/>
<iref primary="true" item="Headers" subitem="MIME-Version"/>
<t>
HTTP is not a MIME-compliant protocol. However, HTTP/1.1 messages MAY
include a single MIME-Version general-header field to indicate what
version of the MIME protocol was used to construct the message. Use
of the MIME-Version header field indicates that the message is in
full compliance with the MIME protocol (as defined in <xref target="RFC2045"/>).
Proxies/gateways are responsible for ensuring full compliance (where
possible) when exporting HTTP messages to strict MIME environments.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="MIME-Version"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="MIME-Version-v"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
MIME-Version = "MIME-Version" ":" OWS MIME-Version-v
MIME-Version-v = 1*DIGIT "." 1*DIGIT
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
MIME version "1.0" is the default for use in HTTP/1.1. However,
HTTP/1.1 message parsing and semantics are defined by this document
and not the MIME specification.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Conversion to Canonical Form" anchor="conversion.to.canonical.form">
<t>
<xref target="RFC2045"/> requires that an Internet mail entity be converted to
canonical form prior to being transferred, as described in Section 4 of <xref target="RFC2049"/>.
<xref target="canonicalization.and.text.defaults"/> of this document describes the forms
allowed for subtypes of the "text" media type when transmitted over
HTTP. <xref target="RFC2046"/> requires that content with a type of "text" represent
line breaks as CRLF and forbids the use of CR or LF outside of line
break sequences. HTTP allows CRLF, bare CR, and bare LF to indicate a
line break within text content when a message is transmitted over
HTTP.
</t>
<t>
Where it is possible, a proxy or gateway from HTTP to a strict MIME
environment SHOULD translate all line breaks within the text media
types described in <xref target="canonicalization.and.text.defaults"/> of this document to the RFC 2049
canonical form of CRLF. Note, however, that this might be complicated
by the presence of a Content-Encoding and by the fact that HTTP
allows the use of some character sets which do not use octets 13 and
10 to represent CR and LF, as is the case for some multi-byte
character sets.
</t>
<t>
Implementors should note that conversion will break any cryptographic
checksums applied to the original content unless the original content
is already in canonical form. Therefore, the canonical form is
recommended for any content that uses such checksums in HTTP.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Conversion of Date Formats" anchor="conversion.of.date.formats">
<t>
HTTP/1.1 uses a restricted set of date formats (Section 6.1 of <xref target="Part1"/>) to
simplify the process of date comparison. Proxies and gateways from
other protocols SHOULD ensure that any Date header field present in a
message conforms to one of the HTTP/1.1 formats and rewrite the date
if necessary.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Introduction of Content-Encoding" anchor="introduction.of.content-encoding">
<t>
RFC 2045 does not include any concept equivalent to HTTP/1.1's
Content-Encoding header field. Since this acts as a modifier on the
media type, proxies and gateways from HTTP to MIME-compliant
protocols MUST either change the value of the Content-Type header
field or decode the entity-body before forwarding the message. (Some
experimental applications of Content-Type for Internet mail have used
a media-type parameter of ";conversions=<content-coding>" to perform
a function equivalent to Content-Encoding. However, this parameter is
not part of RFC 2045).
</t>
</section>
<section title="No Content-Transfer-Encoding" anchor="no.content-transfer-encoding">
<t>
HTTP does not use the Content-Transfer-Encoding field of RFC
2045. Proxies and gateways from MIME-compliant protocols to HTTP MUST
remove any Content-Transfer-Encoding
prior to delivering the response message to an HTTP client.
</t>
<t>
Proxies and gateways from HTTP to MIME-compliant protocols are
responsible for ensuring that the message is in the correct format
and encoding for safe transport on that protocol, where "safe
transport" is defined by the limitations of the protocol being used.
Such a proxy or gateway SHOULD label the data with an appropriate
Content-Transfer-Encoding if doing so will improve the likelihood of
safe transport over the destination protocol.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Introduction of Transfer-Encoding" anchor="introduction.of.transfer-encoding">
<t>
HTTP/1.1 introduces the Transfer-Encoding header field (Section 9.7 of <xref target="Part1"/>).
Proxies/gateways MUST remove any transfer-coding prior to
forwarding a message via a MIME-compliant protocol.
</t>
</section>
<section title="MHTML and Line Length Limitations" anchor="mhtml.line.length">
<t>
HTTP implementations which share code with MHTML <xref target="RFC2557"/> implementations
need to be aware of MIME line length limitations. Since HTTP does not
have this limitation, HTTP does not fold long lines. MHTML messages
being transported by HTTP follow all conventions of MHTML, including
line length limitations and folding, canonicalization, etc., since
HTTP transports all message-bodies as payload (see <xref target="multipart.types"/>) and
does not interpret the content or any MIME header lines that might be
contained therein.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Additional Features" anchor="additional.features">
<t>
<xref target="RFC1945"/> and <xref target="RFC2068"/> document protocol elements used by some
existing HTTP implementations, but not consistently and correctly
across most HTTP/1.1 applications. Implementors are advised to be
aware of these features, but cannot rely upon their presence in, or
interoperability with, other HTTP/1.1 applications. Some of these
describe proposed experimental features, and some describe features
that experimental deployment found lacking that are now addressed in
the base HTTP/1.1 specification.
</t>
<t>
A number of other headers, such as Content-Disposition and Title,
from SMTP and MIME are also often implemented (see <xref target="RFC2076"/>).
</t>
<section title="Content-Disposition" anchor="content-disposition">
<iref item="Headers" subitem="Content-Disposition" primary="true"/>
<iref item="Content-Disposition header" primary="true"/>
<t>
The "Content-Disposition" response-header field has been proposed as a
means for the origin server to suggest a default filename if the user
requests that the content is saved to a file. This usage is derived
from the definition of Content-Disposition in <xref target="RFC2183"/>.
</t>
<figure><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="content-disposition"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="content-disposition-v"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="disposition-type"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="disposition-parm"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="filename-parm"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="disp-extension-token"/><iref primary="true" item="Grammar" subitem="disp-extension-parm"/><artwork type="abnf2616"><![CDATA[
content-disposition = "Content-Disposition" ":" OWS
content-disposition-v
content-disposition-v = disposition-type
*( OWS ";" OWS disposition-parm )
disposition-type = "attachment" / disp-extension-token
disposition-parm = filename-parm / disp-extension-parm
filename-parm = "filename" "=" quoted-string
disp-extension-token = token
disp-extension-parm = token "=" ( token / quoted-string )
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
An example is
</t>
<figure><artwork type="example"><![CDATA[
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="fname.ext"
]]></artwork></figure>
<t>
The receiving user agent SHOULD NOT respect any directory path
information present in the filename-parm parameter, which is the only
parameter believed to apply to HTTP implementations at this time. The
filename SHOULD be treated as a terminal component only.
</t>
<t>
If this header is used in a response with the application/octet-stream
content-type, the implied suggestion is that the user agent
should not display the response, but directly enter a "save response
as..." dialog.
</t>
<t>
See <xref target="content-disposition.issues"/> for Content-Disposition security issues.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Compatibility with Previous Versions" anchor="compatibility">
<section title="Changes from RFC 2068" anchor="changes.from.rfc.2068">
<t>
Transfer-coding and message lengths all interact in ways that
required fixing exactly when chunked encoding is used (to allow for
transfer encoding that may not be self delimiting); it was important
to straighten out exactly how message lengths are computed.
(<xref target="entity.length"/>, see also <xref target="Part1"/>,
<xref target="Part5"/> and <xref target="Part6"/>).
</t>
<t>
Charset wildcarding is introduced to avoid explosion of character set
names in accept headers. (<xref target="header.accept-charset"/>)
</t>
<t>
Content-Base was deleted from the specification: it was not
implemented widely, and there is no simple, safe way to introduce it
without a robust extension mechanism. In addition, it is used in a
similar, but not identical fashion in MHTML <xref target="RFC2557"/>.
</t>
<t>
A content-coding of "identity" was introduced, to solve problems
discovered in caching. (<xref target="content.codings"/>)
</t>
<t>
The Alternates<iref item="Alternates header" primary="true"/><iref item="Headers" subitem="Alternate" primary="true"/>, Content-Version<iref item="Content-Version header" primary="true"/><iref item="Headers" subitem="Content-Version" primary="true"/>, Derived-From<iref item="Derived-From header" primary="true"/><iref item="Headers" subitem="Derived-From" primary="true"/>, Link<iref item="Link header" primary="true"/><iref item="Headers" subitem="Link" primary="true"/>, URI<iref item="URI header" primary="true"/><iref item="Headers" subitem="URI" primary="true"/>, Public<iref item="Public header" primary="true"/><iref item="Headers" subitem="Public" primary="true"/> and
Content-Base<iref item="Content-Base header" primary="true"/><iref item="Headers" subitem="Content-Base" primary="true"/> header fields were defined in previous versions of this
specification, but not commonly implemented. See Section 19.6.2 of <xref target="RFC2068"/>.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Changes from RFC 2616" anchor="changes.from.rfc.2616">
<t>
Clarify contexts that charset is used in.
(<xref target="character.sets"/>)
</t>
<t>
Remove base URI setting semantics for Content-Location due to poor
implementation support, which was caused by too many broken servers emitting
bogus Content-Location headers, and also the potentially undesirable effect
of potentially breaking relative links in content-negotiated resources.
(<xref target="header.content-location"/>)
</t>
<t>
Remove reference to non-existant identity transfer-coding value tokens.
(<xref target="no.content-transfer-encoding"/>)
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Collected ABNF" anchor="collected.abnf">
<figure>
<artwork type="abnf" name="p3-payload.parsed-abnf"><![CDATA[
Accept = "Accept:" OWS Accept-v
Accept-Charset = "Accept-Charset:" OWS Accept-Charset-v
Accept-Charset-v = *( "," OWS ) ( charset / "*" ) [ OWS ";" OWS "q="
qvalue ] *( OWS "," [ OWS ( charset / "*" ) [ OWS ";" OWS "q="
qvalue ] ] )
Accept-Encoding = "Accept-Encoding:" OWS Accept-Encoding-v
Accept-Encoding-v = [ ( "," / ( codings [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] )
) *( OWS "," [ OWS codings [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ] ] ) ]
Accept-Language = "Accept-Language:" OWS Accept-Language-v
Accept-Language-v = *( "," OWS ) language-range [ OWS ";" OWS "q="
qvalue ] *( OWS "," [ OWS language-range [ OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue ]
] )
Accept-v = [ ( "," / ( media-range [ accept-params ] ) ) *( OWS "," [
OWS media-range [ accept-params ] ] ) ]
Content-Encoding = "Content-Encoding:" OWS Content-Encoding-v
Content-Encoding-v = *( "," OWS ) content-coding *( OWS "," [ OWS
content-coding ] )
Content-Language = "Content-Language:" OWS Content-Language-v
Content-Language-v = *( "," OWS ) language-tag *( OWS "," [ OWS
language-tag ] )
Content-Length = <Content-Length, defined in [Part1], Section 9.2>
Content-Location = "Content-Location:" OWS Content-Location-v
Content-Location-v = absolute-URI / partial-URI
Content-MD5 = "Content-MD5:" OWS Content-MD5-v
Content-MD5-v = <base64 of 128 bit MD5 digest as per [RFC1864]>
Content-Range = <Content-Range, defined in [Part5], Section 5.2>
Content-Type = "Content-Type:" OWS Content-Type-v
Content-Type-v = media-type
Expires = <Expires, defined in [Part6], Section 3.3>
Last-Modified = <Last-Modified, defined in [Part4], Section 6.6>
MIME-Version = "MIME-Version:" OWS MIME-Version-v
MIME-Version-v = 1*DIGIT "." 1*DIGIT
OWS = <OWS, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
absolute-URI = <absolute-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
accept-ext = OWS ";" OWS token [ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) ]
accept-params = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue *accept-ext
attribute = token
charset = token
codings = ( content-coding / "*" )
content-coding = token
content-disposition = "Content-Disposition:" OWS
content-disposition-v
content-disposition-v = disposition-type *( OWS ";" OWS
disposition-parm )
disp-extension-parm = token "=" ( token / quoted-string )
disp-extension-token = token
disposition-parm = filename-parm / disp-extension-parm
disposition-type = "attachment" / disp-extension-token
entity-body = *OCTET
entity-header = Content-Encoding / Content-Language / Content-Length
/ Content-Location / Content-MD5 / Content-Range / Content-Type /
Expires / Last-Modified / extension-header
extension-header = header-field
filename-parm = "filename=" quoted-string
header-field = <header-field, defined in [Part1], Section 3.2>
language-range = <language-range, defined in [RFC4647], Section 2.1>
language-tag = <Language-Tag, defined in [RFC5646], Section 2.1>
media-range = ( "*/*" / ( type "/*" ) / ( type "/" subtype ) ) *( OWS
";" OWS parameter )
media-type = type "/" subtype *( OWS ";" OWS parameter )
parameter = attribute "=" value
partial-URI = <partial-URI, defined in [Part1], Section 2.6>
quoted-string = <quoted-string, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
qvalue = <qvalue, defined in [Part1], Section 6.4>
subtype = token
token = <token, defined in [Part1], Section 1.2.2>
type = token
value = token / quoted-string
]]></artwork>
</figure>
<figure><preamble>ABNF diagnostics:</preamble><artwork type="inline"><![CDATA[
; Accept defined but not used
; Accept-Charset defined but not used
; Accept-Encoding defined but not used
; Accept-Language defined but not used
; MIME-Version defined but not used
; content-disposition defined but not used
; entity-body defined but not used
; entity-header defined but not used
]]></artwork></figure></section>
<section title="Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before publication)" anchor="change.log">
<section title="Since RFC2616">
<t>
Extracted relevant partitions from <xref target="RFC2616"/>.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-00">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/8"/>:
"Media Type Registrations"
(<eref target="http://purl.org/NET/http-errata#media-reg"/>)
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/14"/>:
"Clarification regarding quoting of charset values"
(<eref target="http://purl.org/NET/http-errata#charactersets"/>)
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/16"/>:
"Remove 'identity' token references"
(<eref target="http://purl.org/NET/http-errata#identity"/>)
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/25"/>:
"Accept-Encoding BNF"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/35"/>:
"Normative and Informative references"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/46"/>:
"RFC1700 references"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/55"/>:
"Updating to RFC4288"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/65"/>:
"Informative references"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/66"/>:
"ISO-8859-1 Reference"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/68"/>:
"Encoding References Normative"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/86"/>:
"Normative up-to-date references"
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-01">
<t>
Ongoing work on ABNF conversion (<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/36"/>):
<list style="symbols">
<t>
Add explicit references to BNF syntax and rules imported from other parts of the specification.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-02" anchor="changes.since.02">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/67"/>:
"Quoting Charsets"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/105"/>:
"Classification for Allow header"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/115"/>:
"missing default for qvalue in description of Accept-Encoding"
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Ongoing work on IANA Message Header Registration (<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/40"/>):
<list style="symbols">
<t>
Reference RFC 3984, and update header registrations for headers defined
in this document.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-03" anchor="changes.since.03">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/67"/>:
"Quoting Charsets"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/113"/>:
"language tag matching (Accept-Language) vs RFC4647"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/121"/>:
"RFC 1806 has been replaced by RFC2183"
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Other changes:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/68"/>:
"Encoding References Normative" -- rephrase the annotation and reference
<xref target="BCP97"/>.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-04" anchor="changes.since.04">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/132"/>:
"RFC 2822 is updated by RFC 5322"
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Ongoing work on ABNF conversion (<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/36"/>):
<list style="symbols">
<t>
Use "/" instead of "|" for alternatives.
</t>
<t>
Introduce new ABNF rules for "bad" whitespace ("BWS"), optional
whitespace ("OWS") and required whitespace ("RWS").
</t>
<t>
Rewrite ABNFs to spell out whitespace rules, factor out
header value format definitions.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-05" anchor="changes.since.05">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/118"/>:
"Join "Differences Between HTTP Entities and RFC 2045 Entities"?"
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Final work on ABNF conversion (<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/36"/>):
<list style="symbols">
<t>
Add appendix containing collected and expanded ABNF, reorganize ABNF introduction.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Other changes:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
Move definition of quality values into Part 1.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-06" anchor="changes.since.06">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/80"/>:
"Content-Location isn't special"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/155"/>:
"Content Sniffing"
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-07" anchor="changes.since.07">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/13"/>:
"Updated reference for language tags"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/110"/>:
"Clarify rules for determining what entities a response carries"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/154"/>:
"Content-Location base-setting problems"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/155"/>:
"Content Sniffing"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/188"/>:
"pick IANA policy (RFC5226) for Transfer Coding / Content Coding"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/189"/>:
"move definitions of gzip/deflate/compress to part 1"
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Partly resolved issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/148"/>:
"update IANA requirements wrt Transfer-Coding values" (add the
IANA Considerations subsection)
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/149"/>:
"update IANA requirements wrt Content-Coding values" (add the
IANA Considerations subsection)
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Since draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-08" anchor="changes.since.08">
<t>
Closed issues:
<list style="symbols">
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/81"/>:
"Content Negotiation for media types"
</t>
<t>
<eref target="http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/181"/>:
"Accept-Language: which RFC4647 filtering?"
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
</section>
</back>
</rfc>| PAFTECH AB 2003-2026 | 2026-04-23 10:50:15 |