Hypertext Transfer Protocol: Semantics and Content

When content negotiation preferences are sent by the user agent in a request to encourage an algorithm located at the server to select the preferred representation, it is called proactive negotiation (a.k.a., server-driven negotiation). Selection is based on the available representations for a response (the dimensions over which it might vary, such as language, content-coding, etc.) compared to various information supplied in the request, including both the explicit negotiation fields of Section 5.3 and implicit characteristics, such as the client's network address or parts of the User-Agent field.¶

Proactive negotiation is advantageous when the algorithm for selecting from among the available representations is difficult to describe to a user agent, or when the server desires to send its "best guess" to the user agent along with the first response (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, a user agent MAY send request header fields that describe its preferences.¶

Proactive negotiation has serious disadvantages: ¶

• 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?);
• Having the user agent describe its capabilities in every request can be both very inefficient (given that only a small percentage of responses have multiple representations) and a potential risk to the user's privacy;
• It complicates the implementation of an origin server and the algorithms for generating responses to a request; and,
• It limits the reusability of responses for shared caching.

A user agent cannot rely on proactive negotiation preferences being consistently honored, since the origin server might not implement proactive negotiation for the requested resource or might decide that sending a response that doesn't conform to the user agent's preferences is better than sending a 406 (Not Acceptable) response.¶

A Vary header field (Section 7.1.4) is often sent in a response subject to proactive negotiation to indicate what parts of the request information were used in the selection algorithm.¶

With reactive negotiation (a.k.a., agent-driven negotiation), selection of the best response representation (regardless of the status code) is performed by the user agent after receiving an initial response from the origin server that contains a list of resources for alternative representations. If the user agent is not satisfied by the initial response representation, it can perform a GET request on one or more of the alternative resources, selected based on metadata included in the list, to obtain a different form of representation for that response. Selection of alternatives might be performed automatically by the user agent or manually by the user selecting from a generated (possibly hypertext) menu.¶

Note that the above refers to representations of the response, in general, not representations of the resource. The alternative representations are only considered representations of the target resource if the response in which those alternatives are provided has the semantics of being a representation of the target resource (e.g., a 200 (OK) response to a GET request) or has the semantics of providing links to alternative representations for the target resource (e.g., a 300 (Multiple Choices) response to a GET request).¶

A server might choose not to send an initial representation, other than the list of alternatives, and thereby indicate that reactive negotiation by the user agent is preferred. For example, the alternatives listed in responses with the 300 (Multiple Choices) and 406 (Not Acceptable) status codes include information about the available representations so that the user or user agent can react by making a selection.¶

Reactive negotiation is advantageous when the response would vary over commonly used dimensions (such as type, language, or encoding), when the origin server is unable to determine a user agent's capabilities from examining the request, and generally when public caches are used to distribute server load and reduce network usage.¶

Reactive negotiation suffers from the disadvantages of transmitting a list of alternatives to the user agent, which degrades user-perceived latency if transmitted in the header section, and needing a second request to obtain an alternate representation. Furthermore, this specification does not define a mechanism for supporting automatic selection, though it does not prevent such a mechanism from being developed as an extension.¶

Request methods are considered "safe" if their defined semantics are essentially read-only; i.e., the client does not request, and does not expect, any state change on the origin server as a result of applying a safe method to a target resource. Likewise, reasonable use of a safe method is not expected to cause any harm, loss of property, or unusual burden on the origin server.¶

This definition of safe methods does not prevent an implementation from including behavior that is potentially harmful, that is not entirely read-only, or that causes side effects while invoking a safe method. What is important, however, is that the client did not request that additional behavior and cannot be held accountable for it. For example, most servers append request information to access log files at the completion of every response, regardless of the method, and that is considered safe even though the log storage might become full and crash the server. Likewise, a safe request initiated by selecting an advertisement on the Web will often have the side effect of charging an advertising account.¶

Of the request methods defined by this specification, the GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, and TRACE methods are defined to be safe.¶

The purpose of distinguishing between safe and unsafe methods is to allow automated retrieval processes (spiders) and cache performance optimization (pre-fetching) to work without fear of causing harm. In addition, it allows a user agent to apply appropriate constraints on the automated use of unsafe methods when processing potentially untrusted content.¶

A user agent SHOULD distinguish between safe and unsafe methods when presenting potential actions to a user, such that the user can be made aware of an unsafe action before it is requested.¶

When a resource is constructed such that parameters within the effective request URI have the effect of selecting an action, it is the resource owner's responsibility to ensure that the action is consistent with the request method semantics. For example, it is common for Web-based content editing software to use actions within query parameters, such as "page?do=delete". If the purpose of such a resource is to perform an unsafe action, then the resource owner MUST disable or disallow that action when it is accessed using a safe request method. Failure to do so will result in unfortunate side effects when automated processes perform a GET on every URI reference for the sake of link maintenance, pre-fetching, building a search index, etc.¶

A request method is considered "idempotent" if the intended effect on the server of multiple identical requests with that method is the same as the effect for a single such request. Of the request methods defined by this specification, PUT, DELETE, and safe request methods are idempotent.¶

Like the definition of safe, the idempotent property only applies to what has been requested by the user; a server is free to log each request separately, retain a revision control history, or implement other non-idempotent side effects for each idempotent request.¶

Idempotent methods are distinguished because the request can be repeated automatically if a communication failure occurs before the client is able to read the server's response. For example, if a client sends a PUT request and the underlying connection is closed before any response is received, then the client can establish a new connection and retry the idempotent request. It knows that repeating the request will have the same intended effect, even if the original request succeeded, though the response might differ.¶

Request methods can be defined as "cacheable" to indicate that responses to them are allowed to be stored for future reuse; for specific requirements see [CACHING]. In general, safe methods that do not depend on a current or authoritative response are defined as cacheable; this specification defines GET, HEAD, and POST as cacheable, although the overwhelming majority of cache implementations only support GET and HEAD.¶

The GET method requests transfer of a current selected representation for the target resource. GET is the primary mechanism of information retrieval and the focus of almost all performance optimizations. Hence, when people speak of retrieving some identifiable information via HTTP, they are generally referring to making a GET request.¶

It is tempting to think of resource identifiers as remote file system pathnames and of representations as being a copy of the contents of such files. In fact, that is how many resources are implemented (see Section 9.1 for related security considerations). However, there are no such limitations in practice. The HTTP interface for a resource is just as likely to be implemented as a tree of content objects, a programmatic view on various database records, or a gateway to other information systems. Even when the URI mapping mechanism is tied to a file system, an origin server might be configured to execute the files with the request as input and send the output as the representation rather than transfer the files directly. Regardless, only the origin server needs to know how each of its resource identifiers corresponds to an implementation and how each implementation manages to select and send a current representation of the target resource in a response to GET.¶

A client can alter the semantics of GET to be a "range request", requesting transfer of only some part(s) of the selected representation, by sending a Range header field in the request ([RANGERQ]).¶

A payload within a GET request message has no defined semantics; sending a payload body on a GET request might cause some existing implementations to reject the request.¶

The response to a GET request is cacheable; a cache MAY use it to satisfy subsequent GET and HEAD requests unless otherwise indicated by the Cache-Control header field (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT send a message body in the response (i.e., the response terminates at the end of the header section). The server SHOULD send the same header fields in response to a HEAD request as it would have sent if the request had been a GET, except that the payload header fields (Section 3.3) MAY be omitted. This method can be used for obtaining metadata about the selected representation without transferring the representation data and is often used for testing hypertext links for validity, accessibility, and recent modification.¶

A payload within a HEAD request message has no defined semantics; sending a payload body on a HEAD request might cause some existing implementations to reject the request.¶

The response to a HEAD request is cacheable; a cache MAY use it to satisfy subsequent HEAD requests unless otherwise indicated by the Cache-Control header field (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]). A HEAD response might also have an effect on previously cached responses to GET; see Section 4.3.5 of [CACHING].¶

The POST method requests that the target resource process the representation enclosed in the request according to the resource's own specific semantics. For example, POST is used for the following functions (among others): ¶

• Providing a block of data, such as the fields entered into an HTML form, to a data-handling process;
• Posting a message to a bulletin board, newsgroup, mailing list, blog, or similar group of articles;
• Creating a new resource that has yet to be identified by the origin server; and
• Appending data to a resource's existing representation(s).

An origin server indicates response semantics by choosing an appropriate status code depending on the result of processing the POST request; almost all of the status codes defined by this specification might be received in a response to POST (the exceptions being 206 (Partial Content), 304 (Not Modified), and 416 (Range Not Satisfiable)).¶

If one or more resources has been created on the origin server as a result of successfully processing a POST request, the origin server SHOULD send a 201 (Created) response containing a Location header field that provides an identifier for the primary resource created (Section 7.1.2) and a representation that describes the status of the request while referring to the new resource(s).¶

Responses to POST requests are only cacheable when they include explicit freshness information (see Section 4.2.1 of [CACHING]). However, POST caching is not widely implemented. For cases where an origin server wishes the client to be able to cache the result of a POST in a way that can be reused by a later GET, the origin server MAY send a 200 (OK) response containing the result and a Content-Location header field that has the same value as the POST's effective request URI (Section 3.1.4.2).¶

If the result of processing a POST would be equivalent to a representation of an existing resource, an origin server MAY redirect the user agent to that resource by sending a 303 (See Other) response with the existing resource's identifier in the Location field. This has the benefits of providing the user agent a resource identifier and transferring the representation via a method more amenable to shared caching, though at the cost of an extra request if the user agent does not already have the representation cached.¶

The PUT method requests that the state of the target resource be created or replaced with the state defined by the representation enclosed in the request message payload. A successful PUT of a given representation would suggest that a subsequent GET on that same target resource will result in an equivalent representation being sent in a 200 (OK) response. However, there is no guarantee that such a state change will be observable, since the target resource might be acted upon by other user agents in parallel, or might be subject to dynamic processing by the origin server, before any subsequent GET is received. A successful response only implies that the user agent's intent was achieved at the time of its processing by the origin server.¶

If the target resource does not have a current representation and the PUT successfully creates one, then the origin server MUST inform the user agent by sending a 201 (Created) response. If the target resource does have a current representation and that representation is successfully modified in accordance with the state of the enclosed representation, then the origin server MUST send either a 200 (OK) or a 204 (No Content) response to indicate successful completion of the request.¶

An origin server SHOULD ignore unrecognized header fields received in a PUT request (i.e., do not save them as part of the resource state).¶

An origin server SHOULD verify that the PUT representation is consistent with any constraints the server has for the target resource that cannot or will not be changed by the PUT. This is particularly important when the origin server uses internal configuration information related to the URI in order to set the values for representation metadata on GET responses. When a PUT representation is inconsistent with the target resource, the origin server SHOULD either make them consistent, by transforming the representation or changing the resource configuration, or respond with an appropriate error message containing sufficient information to explain why the representation is unsuitable. The 409 (Conflict) or 415 (Unsupported Media Type) status codes are suggested, with the latter being specific to constraints on Content-Type values.¶

For example, if the target resource is configured to always have a Content-Type of "text/html" and the representation being PUT has a Content-Type of "image/jpeg", the origin server ought to do one of: ¶

1. reconfigure the target resource to reflect the new media type;
2. transform the PUT representation to a format consistent with that of the resource before saving it as the new resource state; or,
3. reject the request with a 415 (Unsupported Media Type) response indicating that the target resource is limited to "text/html", perhaps including a link to a different resource that would be a suitable target for the new representation.

HTTP does not define exactly how a PUT method affects the state of an origin server beyond what can be expressed by the intent of the user agent request and the semantics of the origin server response. It does not define what a resource might be, in any sense of that word, beyond the interface provided via HTTP. It does not define how resource state is "stored", nor how such storage might change as a result of a change in resource state, nor how the origin server translates resource state into representations. Generally speaking, all implementation details behind the resource interface are intentionally hidden by the server.¶

An origin server MUST NOT send a validator header field (Section 7.2), such as an ETag or Last-Modified field, in a successful response to PUT unless the request's representation data was saved without any transformation applied to the body (i.e., the resource's new representation data is identical to the representation data received in the PUT request) and the validator field value reflects the new representation. This requirement allows a user agent to know when the representation body it has in memory remains current as a result of the PUT, thus not in need of being retrieved again from the origin server, and that the new validator(s) received in the response can be used for future conditional requests in order to prevent accidental overwrites (Section 5.2).¶

The fundamental difference between the POST and PUT methods is highlighted by the different intent for the enclosed representation. The target resource in a POST request is intended to handle the enclosed representation according to the resource's own semantics, whereas the enclosed representation in a PUT request is defined as replacing the state of the target resource. Hence, the intent of PUT is idempotent and visible to intermediaries, even though the exact effect is only known by the origin server.¶

Proper interpretation of a PUT request presumes that the user agent knows which target resource is desired. A service that selects a proper URI on behalf of the client, after receiving a state-changing request, SHOULD be implemented using the POST method rather than PUT. If the origin server will not make the requested PUT state change to the target resource and instead wishes to have it applied to a different resource, such as when the resource has been moved to a different URI, then the origin server MUST send an appropriate 3xx (Redirection) response; the user agent MAY then make its own decision regarding whether or not to redirect the request.¶

A PUT request applied to the target resource can have side effects on other resources. For example, an article might have a URI for identifying "the current version" (a resource) that is separate from the URIs identifying each particular version (different resources that at one point shared the same state as the current version resource). A successful PUT request on "the current version" URI might therefore create a new version resource in addition to changing the state of the target resource, and might also cause links to be added between the related resources.¶

An origin server that allows PUT on a given target resource MUST send a 400 (Bad Request) response to a PUT request that contains a Content-Range header field (Section 4.2 of [RANGERQ]), since the payload is likely to be partial content that has been mistakenly PUT as a full representation. Partial content updates are possible by targeting a separately identified resource with state that overlaps a portion of the larger resource, or by using a different method that has been specifically defined for partial updates (for example, the PATCH method defined in [RFC5789]).¶

Responses to the PUT method are not cacheable. If a successful PUT request passes through a cache that has one or more stored responses for the effective request URI, those stored responses will be invalidated (see Section 4.4 of [CACHING]).¶

The DELETE method requests that the origin server remove the association between the target resource and its current functionality. In effect, this method is similar to the rm command in UNIX: it expresses a deletion operation on the URI mapping of the origin server rather than an expectation that the previously associated information be deleted.¶

If the target resource has one or more current representations, they might or might not be destroyed by the origin server, and the associated storage might or might not be reclaimed, depending entirely on the nature of the resource and its implementation by the origin server (which are beyond the scope of this specification). Likewise, other implementation aspects of a resource might need to be deactivated or archived as a result of a DELETE, such as database or gateway connections. In general, it is assumed that the origin server will only allow DELETE on resources for which it has a prescribed mechanism for accomplishing the deletion.¶

Relatively few resources allow the DELETE method — its primary use is for remote authoring environments, where the user has some direction regarding its effect. For example, a resource that was previously created using a PUT request, or identified via the Location header field after a 201 (Created) response to a POST request, might allow a corresponding DELETE request to undo those actions. Similarly, custom user agent implementations that implement an authoring function, such as revision control clients using HTTP for remote operations, might use DELETE based on an assumption that the server's URI space has been crafted to correspond to a version repository.¶

If a DELETE method is successfully applied, the origin server SHOULD send a 202 (Accepted) status code if the action will likely succeed but has not yet been enacted, a 204 (No Content) status code if the action has been enacted and no further information is to be supplied, or a 200 (OK) status code if the action has been enacted and the response message includes a representation describing the status.¶

A payload within a DELETE request message has no defined semantics; sending a payload body on a DELETE request might cause some existing implementations to reject the request.¶

Responses to the DELETE method are not cacheable. If a DELETE request passes through a cache that has one or more stored responses for the effective request URI, those stored responses will be invalidated (see Section 4.4 of [CACHING]).¶

The CONNECT method requests that the recipient establish a tunnel to the destination origin server identified by the request-target and, if successful, thereafter restrict its behavior to blind forwarding of packets, in both directions, until the tunnel is closed. Tunnels are commonly used to create an end-to-end virtual connection, through one or more proxies, which can then be secured using TLS (Transport Layer Security, [RFC5246]).¶

CONNECT is intended only for use in requests to a proxy. An origin server that receives a CONNECT request for itself MAY respond with a 2xx (Successful) status code to indicate that a connection is established. However, most origin servers do not implement CONNECT.¶

A client sending a CONNECT request MUST send the authority form of request-target (Section 5.3 of [MESSGNG]); i.e., the request-target consists of only the host name and port number of the tunnel destination, separated by a colon. For example,¶

The recipient proxy can establish a tunnel either by directly connecting to the request-target or, if configured to use another proxy, by forwarding the CONNECT request to the next inbound proxy. Any 2xx (Successful) response indicates that the sender (and all inbound proxies) will switch to tunnel mode immediately after the blank line that concludes the successful response's header section; data received after that blank line is from the server identified by the request-target. Any response other than a successful response indicates that the tunnel has not yet been formed and that the connection remains governed by HTTP.¶

A tunnel is closed when a tunnel intermediary detects that either side has closed its connection: the intermediary MUST attempt to send any outstanding data that came from the closed side to the other side, close both connections, and then discard any remaining data left undelivered.¶

Proxy authentication might be used to establish the authority to create a tunnel. For example,¶

There are significant risks in establishing a tunnel to arbitrary servers, particularly when the destination is a well-known or reserved TCP port that is not intended for Web traffic. For example, a CONNECT to a request-target of "example.com:25" would suggest that the proxy connect to the reserved port for SMTP traffic; if allowed, that could trick the proxy into relaying spam email. Proxies that support CONNECT SHOULD restrict its use to a limited set of known ports or a configurable whitelist of safe request targets.¶

A server MUST NOT send any Transfer-Encoding or Content-Length header fields in a 2xx (Successful) response to CONNECT. A client MUST ignore any Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header fields received in a successful response to CONNECT.¶

A payload within a CONNECT request message has no defined semantics; sending a payload body on a CONNECT request might cause some existing implementations to reject the request.¶

Responses to the CONNECT method are not cacheable.¶

The OPTIONS method requests information about the communication options available for the target resource, at either the origin server or an intervening intermediary. This method allows a client to determine the options and/or requirements associated with a resource, or the capabilities of a server, without implying a resource action.¶

An OPTIONS request with an asterisk ("*") as the request-target (Section 5.3 of [MESSGNG]) applies to the server in general rather than to a specific resource. Since a server's communication options typically depend on the resource, the "*" request is only useful as a "ping" or "no-op" type of method; it does nothing beyond allowing the client to test the capabilities of the server. For example, this can be used to test a proxy for HTTP/1.1 conformance (or lack thereof).¶

If the request-target is not an asterisk, the OPTIONS request applies to the options that are available when communicating with the target resource.¶

A server generating a successful response to OPTIONS SHOULD send any header fields that might indicate optional features implemented by the server and applicable to the target resource (e.g., Allow), including potential extensions not defined by this specification. The response payload, if any, might also describe the communication options in a machine or human-readable representation. A standard format for such a representation is not defined by this specification, but might be defined by future extensions to HTTP. A server MUST generate a Content-Length field with a value of "0" if no payload body is to be sent in the response.¶

A client MAY send a Max-Forwards header field in an OPTIONS request to target a specific recipient in the request chain (see Section 5.1.2). A proxy MUST NOT generate a Max-Forwards header field while forwarding a request unless that request was received with a Max-Forwards field.¶

A client that generates an OPTIONS request containing a payload body MUST send a valid Content-Type header field describing the representation media type. Although this specification does not define any use for such a payload, future extensions to HTTP might use the OPTIONS body to make more detailed queries about the target resource.¶

Responses to the OPTIONS method are not cacheable.¶

The TRACE method requests a remote, application-level loop-back of the request message. The final recipient of the request SHOULD reflect the message received, excluding some fields described below, back to the client as the message body of a 200 (OK) response with a Content-Type of "message/http" (Section 8.3.1 of [MESSGNG]). The final recipient is either the origin server or the first server to receive a Max-Forwards value of zero (0) in the request (Section 5.1.2).¶

A client MUST NOT generate header fields in a TRACE request containing sensitive data that might be disclosed by the response. For example, it would be foolish for a user agent to send stored user credentials [AUTHFRM] or cookies [RFC6265] in a TRACE request. The final recipient of the request SHOULD exclude any request header fields that are likely to contain sensitive data when that recipient generates the response body.¶

TRACE allows the client to see what is being received at the other end of the request chain and use that data for testing or diagnostic information. The value of the Via header field (Section 5.7.1 of [MESSGNG]) is of particular interest, since it acts as a trace of the request chain. Use of the Max-Forwards header field allows the client to limit the length of the request chain, which is useful for testing a chain of proxies forwarding messages in an infinite loop.¶

A client MUST NOT send a message body in a TRACE request.¶

Responses to the TRACE method are not cacheable.¶

The "Expect" header field in a request indicates a certain set of behaviors (expectations) that need to be supported by the server in order to properly handle this request. The only such expectation defined by this specification is 100-continue.¶

The Expect field-value is case-insensitive.¶

A server that receives an Expect field-value other than 100-continue MAY respond with a 417 (Expectation Failed) status code to indicate that the unexpected expectation cannot be met.¶

A 100-continue expectation informs recipients that the client is about to send a (presumably large) message body in this request and wishes to receive a 100 (Continue) interim response if the request-line and header fields are not sufficient to cause an immediate success, redirect, or error response. This allows the client to wait for an indication that it is worthwhile to send the message body before actually doing so, which can improve efficiency when the message body is huge or when the client anticipates that an error is likely (e.g., when sending a state-changing method, for the first time, without previously verified authentication credentials).¶

For example, a request that begins with¶

allows the origin server to immediately respond with an error message, such as 401 (Unauthorized) or 405 (Method Not Allowed), before the client starts filling the pipes with an unnecessary data transfer.¶

Requirements for clients: ¶

• A client MUST NOT generate a 100-continue expectation in a request that does not include a message body.
• A client that will wait for a 100 (Continue) response before sending the request message body MUST send an Expect header field containing a 100-continue expectation.
• A client that sends a 100-continue expectation is not required to wait for any specific length of time; such a client MAY proceed to send the message body even if it has not yet received a response. Furthermore, since 100 (Continue) responses cannot be sent through an HTTP/1.0 intermediary, such a client SHOULD NOT wait for an indefinite period before sending the message body.
• A client that receives a 417 (Expectation Failed) status code in response to a request containing a 100-continue expectation SHOULD repeat that request without a 100-continue expectation, since the 417 response merely indicates that the response chain does not support expectations (e.g., it passes through an HTTP/1.0 server).

Requirements for servers: ¶

• A server that receives a 100-continue expectation in an HTTP/1.0 request MUST ignore that expectation.
• A server MAY omit sending a 100 (Continue) response if it has already received some or all of the message body for the corresponding request, or if the framing indicates that there is no message body.
• A server that sends a 100 (Continue) response MUST ultimately send a final status code, once the message body is received and processed, unless the connection is closed prematurely.
• A server that responds with a final status code before reading the entire message body SHOULD indicate in that response whether it intends to close the connection or continue reading and discarding the request message (see Section 6.6 of [MESSGNG]).

An origin server MUST, upon receiving an HTTP/1.1 (or later) request-line and a complete header section that contains a 100-continue expectation and indicates a request message body will follow, either send an immediate response with a final status code, if that status can be determined by examining just the request-line and header fields, or send an immediate 100 (Continue) response to encourage the client to send the request's message body. The origin server MUST NOT wait for the message body before sending the 100 (Continue) response.¶

A proxy MUST, upon receiving an HTTP/1.1 (or later) request-line and a complete header section that contains a 100-continue expectation and indicates a request message body will follow, either send an immediate response with a final status code, if that status can be determined by examining just the request-line and header fields, or begin forwarding the request toward the origin server by sending a corresponding request-line and header section to the next inbound server. If the proxy believes (from configuration or past interaction) that the next inbound server only supports HTTP/1.0, the proxy MAY generate an immediate 100 (Continue) response to encourage the client to begin sending the message body.¶

The "Max-Forwards" header field provides a mechanism with the TRACE (Section 4.3.8) and OPTIONS (Section 4.3.7) request methods to limit the number of times that the request is forwarded by proxies. This can be useful when the client is attempting to trace a request that appears to be failing or looping mid-chain.¶

The Max-Forwards value is a decimal integer indicating the remaining number of times this request message can be forwarded.¶

Each intermediary that receives a TRACE or OPTIONS request containing a Max-Forwards header field MUST check and update its value prior to forwarding the request. If the received value is zero (0), the intermediary MUST NOT forward the request; instead, the intermediary MUST respond as the final recipient. If the received Max-Forwards value is greater than zero, the intermediary MUST generate an updated Max-Forwards field in the forwarded message with a field-value that is the lesser of a) the received value decremented by one (1) or b) the recipient's maximum supported value for Max-Forwards.¶

A recipient MAY ignore a Max-Forwards header field received with any other request methods.¶

Many of the request header fields for proactive negotiation use a common parameter, named "q" (case-insensitive), to assign a relative "weight" to the preference for that associated kind of content. This weight is referred to as a "quality value" (or "qvalue") because the same parameter name is often used within server configurations to assign a weight to the relative quality of the various representations that can be selected for a resource.¶

The weight is normalized to a real number in the range 0 through 1, where 0.001 is the least preferred and 1 is the most preferred; a value of 0 means "not acceptable". If no "q" parameter is present, the default weight is 1.¶

A sender of qvalue MUST NOT generate more than three digits after the decimal point. User configuration of these values ought to be limited in the same fashion.¶

The "Accept" header field can be used by user agents to specify response media types that are acceptable. Accept header fields can be used to indicate that the request is specifically limited to a small set of desired types, as in the case of a request for an in-line image.¶

The asterisk "*" character is used to group media types into ranges, with "*/*" indicating all media types and "type/*" indicating all subtypes of that type. The media-range can include media type parameters that are applicable to that range.¶

Each media-range might be followed by zero or more applicable media type parameters (e.g., charset), an optional "q" parameter for indicating a relative weight (Section 5.3.1), and then zero or more extension parameters. The "q" parameter is necessary if any extensions (accept-ext) are present, since it acts as a separator between the two parameter sets.¶

The example¶

is interpreted as "I prefer audio/basic, but send me any audio type if it is the best available after an 80% markdown in quality".¶

A request without any Accept header field implies that the user agent will accept any media type in response. If the header field is present in a request and none of the available representations for the response have a media type that is listed as acceptable, the origin server can either honor the header field by sending a 406 (Not Acceptable) response or disregard the header field by treating the response as if it is not subject to content negotiation.¶

A more elaborate example is¶

Verbally, this would be interpreted as "text/html and text/x-c are the equally preferred media types, but if they do not exist, then send the text/x-dvi representation, and if that does not exist, send the text/plain representation".¶

Media ranges can be overridden by more specific media ranges or specific media types. If more than one media range applies to a given type, the most specific reference has precedence. For example,¶

have the following precedence: ¶

1. text/plain;format=flowed
2. text/plain
3. text/*
4. */*

The media type quality factor associated with a given type is determined by finding the media range with the highest precedence that matches the type. For example,¶

Note: A user agent might be provided with a default set of quality values for certain media ranges. However, unless the user agent is a closed system that cannot interact with other rendering agents, this default set ought to be configurable by the user.¶

The "Accept-Charset" header field can be sent by a user agent to indicate what charsets are acceptable in textual response content. This field allows user agents capable of understanding more comprehensive or special-purpose charsets to signal that capability to an origin server that is capable of representing information in those charsets.¶

Charset names are defined in Section 3.1.1.2. A user agent MAY associate a quality value with each charset to indicate the user's relative preference for that charset, as defined in Section 5.3.1. An example is¶

The special value "*", if present in the Accept-Charset field, matches every charset that is not mentioned elsewhere in the Accept-Charset field. If no "*" is present in an Accept-Charset field, then any charsets not explicitly mentioned in the field are considered "not acceptable" to the client.¶

A request without any Accept-Charset header field implies that the user agent will accept any charset in response. Most general-purpose user agents do not send Accept-Charset, unless specifically configured to do so, because a detailed list of supported charsets makes it easier for a server to identify an individual by virtue of the user agent's request characteristics (Section 9.7).¶

If an Accept-Charset header field is present in a request and none of the available representations for the response has a charset that is listed as acceptable, the origin server can either honor the header field, by sending a 406 (Not Acceptable) response, or disregard the header field by treating the resource as if it is not subject to content negotiation.¶

The "Accept-Encoding" header field can be used by user agents to indicate what response content-codings (Section 3.1.2.1) are acceptable in the response. An "identity" token is used as a synonym for "no encoding" in order to communicate when no encoding is preferred.¶

Each codings value MAY be given an associated quality value representing the preference for that encoding, as defined in Section 5.3.1. The asterisk "*" symbol in an Accept-Encoding field matches any available content-coding not explicitly listed in the header field.¶

For example,¶

A request without an Accept-Encoding header field implies that the user agent has no preferences regarding content-codings. Although this allows the server to use any content-coding in a response, it does not imply that the user agent will be able to correctly process all encodings.¶

A server tests whether a content-coding for a given representation is acceptable using these rules: ¶

1. If no Accept-Encoding field is in the request, any content-coding is considered acceptable by the user agent.
2. If the representation has no content-coding, then it is acceptable by default unless specifically excluded by the Accept-Encoding field stating either "identity;q=0" or "*;q=0" without a more specific entry for "identity".
3. If the representation's content-coding is one of the content-codings listed in the Accept-Encoding field, then it is acceptable unless it is accompanied by a qvalue of 0. (As defined in Section 5.3.1, a qvalue of 0 means "not acceptable".)
4. If multiple content-codings are acceptable, then the acceptable content-coding with the highest non-zero qvalue is preferred.

An Accept-Encoding header field with a combined field-value that is empty implies that the user agent does not want any content-coding in response. If an Accept-Encoding header field is present in a request and none of the available representations for the response have a content-coding that is listed as acceptable, the origin server SHOULD send a response without any content-coding.¶

The "Accept-Language" header field can be used by user agents to indicate the set of natural languages that are preferred in the response. Language tags are defined in Section 3.1.3.1.¶

Each language-range can be given an associated quality value representing an estimate of the user's preference for the languages specified by that range, as defined in Section 5.3.1. For example,¶

would mean: "I prefer Danish, but will accept British English and other types of English".¶

A request without any Accept-Language header field implies that the user agent will accept any language in response. If the header field is present in a request and none of the available representations for the response have a matching language tag, the origin server can either disregard the header field by treating the response as if it is not subject to content negotiation or honor the header field by sending a 406 (Not Acceptable) response. However, the latter is not encouraged, as doing so can prevent users from accessing content that they might be able to use (with translation software, for example).¶

Note that some recipients treat the order in which language tags are listed as an indication of descending priority, particularly for tags that are assigned equal quality values (no value is the same as q=1). However, this behavior cannot be relied upon. For consistency and to maximize interoperability, many user agents assign each language tag a unique quality value while also listing them in order of decreasing quality. Additional discussion of language priority lists can be found in Section 2.3 of [RFC4647].¶

For matching, Section 3 of [RFC4647] defines several matching schemes. Implementations can offer the most appropriate matching scheme for their requirements. The "Basic Filtering" scheme ([RFC4647], Section 3.3.1) is identical to the matching scheme that was previously defined for HTTP in Section 14.4 of [RFC2616].¶

It might be contrary to the privacy expectations of the user to send an Accept-Language header field with the complete linguistic preferences of the user in every request (Section 9.7).¶

Since intelligibility is highly dependent on the individual user, user agents need to allow user control over the linguistic preference (either through configuration of the user agent itself or by defaulting to a user controllable system setting). A user agent that does not provide such control to the user MUST NOT send an Accept-Language header field.¶

The From header field is rarely sent by non-robotic user agents. A user agent SHOULD NOT send a From header field without explicit configuration by the user, since that might conflict with the user's privacy interests or their site's security policy.¶

A robotic user agent SHOULD send a valid From header field so that the person responsible for running the robot can be contacted if problems occur on servers, such as if the robot is sending excessive, unwanted, or invalid requests.¶

A server SHOULD NOT use the From header field for access control or authentication, since most recipients will assume that the field value is public information.¶

The "Referer" [sic] header field allows the user agent to specify a URI reference for the resource from which the target URI was obtained (i.e., the "referrer", though the field name is misspelled). A user agent MUST NOT include the fragment and userinfo components of the URI reference [RFC3986], if any, when generating the Referer field value.¶

The Referer header field allows servers to generate back-links to other resources for simple analytics, logging, optimized caching, etc. It also allows obsolete or mistyped links to be found for maintenance. Some servers use the Referer header field as a means of denying links from other sites (so-called "deep linking") or restricting cross-site request forgery (CSRF), but not all requests contain it.¶

If the target URI was obtained from a source that does not have its own URI (e.g., input from the user keyboard, or an entry within the user's bookmarks/favorites), the user agent MUST either exclude the Referer field or send it with a value of "about:blank".¶

The Referer field has the potential to reveal information about the request context or browsing history of the user, which is a privacy concern if the referring resource's identifier reveals personal information (such as an account name) or a resource that is supposed to be confidential (such as behind a firewall or internal to a secured service). Most general-purpose user agents do not send the Referer header field when the referring resource is a local "file" or "data" URI. A user agent MUST NOT send a Referer header field in an unsecured HTTP request if the referring page was received with a secure protocol. See Section 9.4 for additional security considerations.¶

Some intermediaries have been known to indiscriminately remove Referer header fields from outgoing requests. This has the unfortunate side effect of interfering with protection against CSRF attacks, which can be far more harmful to their users. Intermediaries and user agent extensions that wish to limit information disclosure in Referer ought to restrict their changes to specific edits, such as replacing internal domain names with pseudonyms or truncating the query and/or path components. An intermediary SHOULD NOT modify or delete the Referer header field when the field value shares the same scheme and host as the request target.¶

The "User-Agent" header field contains information about the user agent originating the request, which is often used by servers to help identify the scope of reported interoperability problems, to work around or tailor responses to avoid particular user agent limitations, and for analytics regarding browser or operating system use. A user agent SHOULD send a User-Agent field in each request unless specifically configured not to do so.¶

The User-Agent field-value consists of one or more product identifiers, each followed by zero or more comments (Section 3.2 of [MESSGNG]), which together identify the user agent software and its significant subproducts. By convention, the product identifiers are listed in decreasing order of their significance for identifying the user agent software. Each product identifier consists of a name and optional version.¶

A sender SHOULD limit generated product identifiers to what is necessary to identify the product; a sender MUST NOT generate advertising or other nonessential information within the product identifier. A sender SHOULD NOT generate information in product-version that is not a version identifier (i.e., successive versions of the same product name ought to differ only in the product-version portion of the product identifier).¶

A user agent SHOULD NOT generate a User-Agent field containing needlessly fine-grained detail and SHOULD limit the addition of subproducts by third parties. Overly long and detailed User-Agent field values increase request latency and the risk of a user being identified against their wishes ("fingerprinting").¶

Likewise, implementations are encouraged not to use the product tokens of other implementations in order to declare compatibility with them, as this circumvents the purpose of the field. If a user agent masquerades as a different user agent, recipients can assume that the user intentionally desires to see responses tailored for that identified user agent, even if they might not work as well for the actual user agent being used.¶

The 100 (Continue) status code indicates that the initial part of a request has been received and has not yet been rejected by the server. The server intends to send a final response after the request has been fully received and acted upon.¶

When the request contains an Expect header field that includes a 100-continue expectation, the 100 response indicates that the server wishes to receive the request payload body, as described in Section 5.1.1. The client ought to continue sending the request and discard the 100 response.¶

If the request did not contain an Expect header field containing the 100-continue expectation, the client can simply discard this interim response.¶

The 101 (Switching Protocols) status code indicates that the server understands and is willing to comply with the client's request, via the Upgrade header field (Section 6.7 of [MESSGNG]), for a change in the application protocol being used on this connection. The server MUST generate an Upgrade header field in the response that indicates which protocol(s) will be switched to immediately after the empty line that terminates the 101 response.¶

It is assumed that the server will only agree to switch protocols when it is advantageous to do so. For example, switching to a newer version of HTTP might be advantageous over older versions, and switching to a real-time, synchronous protocol might be advantageous when delivering resources that use such features.¶

The 200 (OK) status code indicates that the request has succeeded. The payload sent in a 200 response depends on the request method. For the methods defined by this specification, the intended meaning of the payload can be summarized as: ¶

GET

a representation of the target resource;

HEAD

the same representation as GET, but without the representation data;

POST

a representation of the status of, or results obtained from, the action;

PUT, DELETE

a representation of the status of the action;

OPTIONS

a representation of the communications options;

TRACE

a representation of the request message as received by the end server.

Aside from responses to CONNECT, a 200 response always has a payload, though an origin server MAY generate a payload body of zero length. If no payload is desired, an origin server ought to send 204 (No Content) instead. For CONNECT, no payload is allowed because the successful result is a tunnel, which begins immediately after the 200 response header section.¶

A 200 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 201 (Created) status code indicates that the request has been fulfilled and has resulted in one or more new resources being created. The primary resource created by the request is identified by either a Location header field in the response or, if no Location field is received, by the effective request URI.¶

The 201 response payload typically describes and links to the resource(s) created. See Section 7.2 for a discussion of the meaning and purpose of validator header fields, such as ETag and Last-Modified, in a 201 response.¶

The 202 (Accepted) status code indicates that the request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed. The request might or might not eventually be acted upon, as it might be disallowed when processing actually takes place. There is no facility in HTTP for re-sending a status code from an asynchronous operation.¶

The 202 response is intentionally noncommittal. Its purpose is to allow a server to accept a request for some other process (perhaps a batch-oriented process that is only run once per day) without requiring that the user agent's connection to the server persist until the process is completed. The representation sent with this response ought to describe the request's current status and point to (or embed) a status monitor that can provide the user with an estimate of when the request will be fulfilled.¶

The 203 (Non-Authoritative Information) status code indicates that the request was successful but the enclosed payload has been modified from that of the origin server's 200 (OK) response by a transforming proxy (Section 5.7.2 of [MESSGNG]). This status code allows the proxy to notify recipients when a transformation has been applied, since that knowledge might impact later decisions regarding the content. For example, future cache validation requests for the content might only be applicable along the same request path (through the same proxies).¶

The 203 response is similar to the Warning code of 214 Transformation Applied (Section 5.5 of [CACHING]), which has the advantage of being applicable to responses with any status code.¶

A 203 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 204 (No Content) status code indicates that the server has successfully fulfilled the request and that there is no additional content to send in the response payload body. Metadata in the response header fields refer to the target resource and its selected representation after the requested action was applied.¶

For example, if a 204 status code is received in response to a PUT request and the response contains an ETag header field, then the PUT was successful and the ETag field-value contains the entity-tag for the new representation of that target resource.¶

The 204 response allows a server to indicate that the action has been successfully applied to the target resource, while implying that the user agent does not need to traverse away from its current "document view" (if any). The server assumes that the user agent will provide some indication of the success to its user, in accord with its own interface, and apply any new or updated metadata in the response to its active representation.¶

For example, a 204 status code is commonly used with document editing interfaces corresponding to a "save" action, such that the document being saved remains available to the user for editing. It is also frequently used with interfaces that expect automated data transfers to be prevalent, such as within distributed version control systems.¶

A 204 response is terminated by the first empty line after the header fields because it cannot contain a message body.¶

A 204 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 205 (Reset Content) status code indicates that the server has fulfilled the request and desires that the user agent reset the "document view", which caused the request to be sent, to its original state as received from the origin server.¶

This response is intended to support a common data entry use case where the user receives content that supports data entry (a form, notepad, canvas, etc.), enters or manipulates data in that space, causes the entered data to be submitted in a request, and then the data entry mechanism is reset for the next entry so that the user can easily initiate another input action.¶

Since the 205 status code implies that no additional content will be provided, a server MUST NOT generate a payload in a 205 response. In other words, a server MUST do one of the following for a 205 response: a) indicate a zero-length body for the response by including a Content-Length header field with a value of 0; b) indicate a zero-length payload for the response by including a Transfer-Encoding header field with a value of chunked and a message body consisting of a single chunk of zero-length; or, c) close the connection immediately after sending the blank line terminating the header section.¶

The 300 (Multiple Choices) status code indicates that the target resource has more than one representation, each with its own more specific identifier, and information about the alternatives is being provided so that the user (or user agent) can select a preferred representation by redirecting its request to one or more of those identifiers. In other words, the server desires that the user agent engage in reactive negotiation to select the most appropriate representation(s) for its needs (Section 3.4).¶

If the server has a preferred choice, the server SHOULD generate a Location header field containing a preferred choice's URI reference. The user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic redirection.¶

For request methods other than HEAD, the server SHOULD generate a payload in the 300 response containing a list of representation metadata and URI reference(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most preferred. The user agent MAY make a selection from that list automatically if it understands the provided media type. A specific format for automatic selection is not defined by this specification because HTTP tries to remain orthogonal to the definition of its payloads. In practice, the representation is provided in some easily parsed format believed to be acceptable to the user agent, as determined by shared design or content negotiation, or in some commonly accepted hypertext format.¶

A 300 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 301 (Moved Permanently) status code indicates that the target resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs. Clients with link-editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the effective request URI to one or more of the new references sent by the server, where possible.¶

The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response containing a preferred URI reference for the new permanent URI. The user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic redirection. The server's response payload usually contains a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).¶

A 301 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 302 (Found) status code indicates that the target resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client ought to continue to use the effective request URI for future requests.¶

The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response containing a URI reference for the different URI. The user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic redirection. The server's response payload usually contains a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the different URI(s).¶

The 303 (See Other) status code indicates that the server is redirecting the user agent to a different resource, as indicated by a URI in the Location header field, which is intended to provide an indirect response to the original request. A user agent can perform a retrieval request targeting that URI (a GET or HEAD request if using HTTP), which might also be redirected, and present the eventual result as an answer to the original request. Note that the new URI in the Location header field is not considered equivalent to the effective request URI.¶

This status code is applicable to any HTTP method. It is primarily used to allow the output of a POST action to redirect the user agent to a selected resource, since doing so provides the information corresponding to the POST response in a form that can be separately identified, bookmarked, and cached, independent of the original request.¶

A 303 response to a GET request indicates that the origin server does not have a representation of the target resource that can be transferred by the server over HTTP. However, the Location field value refers to a resource that is descriptive of the target resource, such that making a retrieval request on that other resource might result in a representation that is useful to recipients without implying that it represents the original target resource. Note that answers to the questions of what can be represented, what representations are adequate, and what might be a useful description are outside the scope of HTTP.¶

Except for responses to a HEAD request, the representation of a 303 response ought to contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the same URI reference provided in the Location header field.¶

The 305 (Use Proxy) status code was defined in a previous version of this specification and is now deprecated (Appendix B of [RFC7231]).¶

The 306 status code was defined in a previous version of this specification, is no longer used, and the code is reserved.¶

The 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code indicates that the target resource resides temporarily under a different URI and the user agent MUST NOT change the request method if it performs an automatic redirection to that URI. Since the redirection can change over time, the client ought to continue using the original effective request URI for future requests.¶

The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response containing a URI reference for the different URI. The user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic redirection. The server's response payload usually contains a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the different URI(s).¶

The 400 (Bad Request) status code indicates that the server cannot or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to be a client error (e.g., malformed request syntax, invalid request message framing, or deceptive request routing).¶

The 402 (Payment Required) status code is reserved for future use.¶

The 403 (Forbidden) status code indicates that the server understood the request but refuses to authorize it. A server that wishes to make public why the request has been forbidden can describe that reason in the response payload (if any).¶

If authentication credentials were provided in the request, the server considers them insufficient to grant access. The client SHOULD NOT automatically repeat the request with the same credentials. The client MAY repeat the request with new or different credentials. However, a request might be forbidden for reasons unrelated to the credentials.¶

An origin server that wishes to "hide" the current existence of a forbidden target resource MAY instead respond with a status code of 404 (Not Found).¶

The 404 (Not Found) status code indicates that the origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that one exists. A 404 status code does not indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or permanent; the 410 (Gone) status code is preferred over 404 if the origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that the condition is likely to be permanent.¶

A 404 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 405 (Method Not Allowed) status code indicates that the method received in the request-line is known by the origin server but not supported by the target resource. The origin server MUST generate an Allow header field in a 405 response containing a list of the target resource's currently supported methods.¶

A 405 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 406 (Not Acceptable) status code indicates that the target resource does not have a current representation that would be acceptable to the user agent, according to the proactive negotiation header fields received in the request (Section 5.3), and the server is unwilling to supply a default representation.¶

The server SHOULD generate a payload containing a list of available representation characteristics and corresponding resource identifiers from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. A user agent MAY automatically select the most appropriate choice from that list. However, this specification does not define any standard for such automatic selection, as described in Section 6.4.1.¶

The 408 (Request Timeout) status code indicates that the server did not receive a complete request message within the time that it was prepared to wait. A server SHOULD send the "close" connection option (Section 6.1 of [MESSGNG]) in the response, since 408 implies that the server has decided to close the connection rather than continue waiting. If the client has an outstanding request in transit, the client MAY repeat that request on a new connection.¶

The 409 (Conflict) status code indicates that the request could not be completed due to a conflict with the current state of the target resource. This code is used in situations where the user might be able to resolve the conflict and resubmit the request. The server SHOULD generate a payload that includes enough information for a user to recognize the source of the conflict.¶

Conflicts are most likely to occur in response to a PUT request. For example, if versioning were being used and the representation being PUT included changes to a resource that conflict with those made by an earlier (third-party) request, the origin server might use a 409 response to indicate that it can't complete the request. In this case, the response representation would likely contain information useful for merging the differences based on the revision history.¶

The 410 (Gone) status code indicates that access to the target resource is no longer available at the origin server and that this condition is likely to be permanent. If the origin server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) ought to be used instead.¶

The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging to individuals no longer associated with the origin server's site. It is not necessary to mark all permanently unavailable resources as "gone" or to keep the mark for any length of time — that is left to the discretion of the server owner.¶

A 410 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 411 (Length Required) status code indicates that the server refuses to accept the request without a defined Content-Length (Section 3.3.2 of [MESSGNG]). The client MAY repeat the request if it adds a valid Content-Length header field containing the length of the message body in the request message.¶

The 413 (Payload Too Large) status code indicates that the server is refusing to process a request because the request payload is larger than the server is willing or able to process. The server MAY close the connection to prevent the client from continuing the request.¶

If the condition is temporary, the server SHOULD generate a Retry-After header field to indicate that it is temporary and after what time the client MAY try again.¶

The 414 (URI Too Long) status code indicates that the server is refusing to service the request because the request-target (Section 5.3 of [MESSGNG]) is longer than the server is willing to interpret. This rare condition is only likely to occur when a client has improperly converted a POST request to a GET request with long query information, when the client has descended into a "black hole" of redirection (e.g., a redirected URI prefix that points to a suffix of itself) or when the server is under attack by a client attempting to exploit potential security holes.¶

A 414 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 415 (Unsupported Media Type) status code indicates that the origin server is refusing to service the request because the payload is in a format not supported by this method on the target resource. The format problem might be due to the request's indicated Content-Type or Content-Encoding, or as a result of inspecting the data directly.¶

The 417 (Expectation Failed) status code indicates that the expectation given in the request's Expect header field (Section 5.1.1) could not be met by at least one of the inbound servers.¶

The 426 (Upgrade Required) status code indicates that the server refuses to perform the request using the current protocol but might be willing to do so after the client upgrades to a different protocol. The server MUST send an Upgrade header field in a 426 response to indicate the required protocol(s) (Section 6.7 of [MESSGNG]).¶

Example:

HTTP/1.1 426 Upgrade Required
Upgrade: HTTP/3.0
Connection: Upgrade
Content-Length: 53
Content-Type: text/plain

This service requires use of the HTTP/3.0 protocol.

The 500 (Internal Server Error) status code indicates that the server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from fulfilling the request.¶

The 501 (Not Implemented) status code indicates that the server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.¶

A 501 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).¶

The 502 (Bad Gateway) status code indicates that the server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from an inbound server it accessed while attempting to fulfill the request.¶

The 503 (Service Unavailable) status code indicates that the server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overload or scheduled maintenance, which will likely be alleviated after some delay. The server MAY send a Retry-After header field (Section 7.1.3) to suggest an appropriate amount of time for the client to wait before retrying the request.¶

The 504 (Gateway Timeout) status code indicates that the server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response from an upstream server it needed to access in order to complete the request.¶

The 505 (HTTP Version Not Supported) status code indicates that the server does not support, or refuses to support, the major version of HTTP that was used in the request message. The server is indicating that it is unable or unwilling to complete the request using the same major version as the client, as described in Section 2.6 of [MESSGNG], other than with this error message. The server SHOULD generate a representation for the 505 response that describes why that version is not supported and what other protocols are supported by that server.¶

The "Location" header field is used in some responses to refer to a specific resource in relation to the response. The type of relationship is defined by the combination of request method and status code semantics.¶

The field value consists of a single URI-reference. When it has the form of a relative reference ([RFC3986], Section 4.2), the final value is computed by resolving it against the effective request URI ([RFC3986], Section 5).¶

For 201 (Created) responses, the Location value refers to the primary resource created by the request. For 3xx (Redirection) responses, the Location value refers to the preferred target resource for automatically redirecting the request.¶

If the Location value provided in a 3xx (Redirection) response does not have a fragment component, a user agent MUST process the redirection as if the value inherits the fragment component of the URI reference used to generate the request target (i.e., the redirection inherits the original reference's fragment, if any).¶

For example, a GET request generated for the URI reference "http://www.example.org/~tim" might result in a 303 (See Other) response containing the header field:

  Location: /People.html#tim

which suggests that the user agent redirect to "http://www.example.org/People.html#tim"

Likewise, a GET request generated for the URI reference "http://www.example.org/index.html#larry" might result in a 301 (Moved Permanently) response containing the header field:

  Location: http://www.example.net/index.html

which suggests that the user agent redirect to "http://www.example.net/index.html#larry", preserving the original fragment identifier.

There are circumstances in which a fragment identifier in a Location value would not be appropriate. For example, the Location header field in a 201 (Created) response is supposed to provide a URI that is specific to the created resource.¶

Servers send the "Retry-After" header field to indicate how long the user agent ought to wait before making a follow-up request. When sent with a 503 (Service Unavailable) response, Retry-After indicates how long the service is expected to be unavailable to the client. When sent with any 3xx (Redirection) response, Retry-After indicates the minimum time that the user agent is asked to wait before issuing the redirected request.¶

The value of this field can be either an HTTP-date or a number of seconds to delay after the response is received.¶

A delay-seconds value is a non-negative decimal integer, representing time in seconds.¶

Two examples of its use are¶

In the latter example, the delay is 2 minutes.¶

The "Vary" header field in a response describes what parts of a request message, aside from the method, Host header field, and request target, might influence the origin server's process for selecting and representing this response. The value consists of either a single asterisk ("*") or a list of header field names (case-insensitive).¶

A Vary field value of "*" signals that anything about the request might play a role in selecting the response representation, possibly including elements outside the message syntax (e.g., the client's network address). A recipient will not be able to determine whether this response is appropriate for a later request without forwarding the request to the origin server. A proxy MUST NOT generate a Vary field with a "*" value.¶

A Vary field value consisting of a comma-separated list of names indicates that the named request header fields, known as the selecting header fields, might have a role in selecting the representation. The potential selecting header fields are not limited to those defined by this specification.¶

For example, a response that contains

  Vary: accept-encoding, accept-language

indicates that the origin server might have used the request's Accept-Encoding and Accept-Language fields (or lack thereof) as determining factors while choosing the content for this response.

An origin server might send Vary with a list of fields for two purposes: ¶

1. To inform cache recipients that they MUST NOT use this response to satisfy a later request unless the later request has the same values for the listed fields as the original request (Section 4.1 of [CACHING]). In other words, Vary expands the cache key required to match a new request to the stored cache entry.

2. To inform user agent recipients that this response is subject to content negotiation (Section 5.3) and that a different representation might be sent in a subsequent request if additional parameters are provided in the listed header fields (proactive negotiation).

An origin server SHOULD send a Vary header field when its algorithm for selecting a representation varies based on aspects of the request message other than the method and request target, unless the variance cannot be crossed or the origin server has been deliberately configured to prevent cache transparency. For example, there is no need to send the Authorization field name in Vary because reuse across users is constrained by the field definition (Section 4.2 of [AUTHFRM]). Likewise, an origin server might use Cache-Control directives (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]) to supplant Vary if it considers the variance less significant than the performance cost of Vary's impact on caching.¶

The "Allow" header field lists the set of methods advertised as supported by the target resource. The purpose of this field is strictly to inform the recipient of valid request methods associated with the resource.¶

The actual set of allowed methods is defined by the origin server at the time of each request. An origin server MUST generate an Allow field in a 405 (Method Not Allowed) response and MAY do so in any other response. An empty Allow field value indicates that the resource allows no methods, which might occur in a 405 response if the resource has been temporarily disabled by configuration.¶

A proxy MUST NOT modify the Allow header field — it does not need to understand all of the indicated methods in order to handle them according to the generic message handling rules.¶

The "Server" header field contains information about the software used by the origin server to handle the request, which is often used by clients to help identify the scope of reported interoperability problems, to work around or tailor requests to avoid particular server limitations, and for analytics regarding server or operating system use. An origin server MAY generate a Server field in its responses.¶

The Server field-value consists of one or more product identifiers, each followed by zero or more comments (Section 3.2 of [MESSGNG]), which together identify the origin server software and its significant subproducts. By convention, the product identifiers are listed in decreasing order of their significance for identifying the origin server software. Each product identifier consists of a name and optional version, as defined in Section 5.5.3.¶

An origin server SHOULD NOT generate a Server field containing needlessly fine-grained detail and SHOULD limit the addition of subproducts by third parties. Overly long and detailed Server field values increase response latency and potentially reveal internal implementation details that might make it (slightly) easier for attackers to find and exploit known security holes.¶

HTTP method registrations MUST include the following fields: ¶

• Method Name (see Section 4)
• Safe ("yes" or "no", see Section 4.2.1)
• Idempotent ("yes" or "no", see Section 4.2.2)
• Pointer to specification text

Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see [RFC5226], Section 4.1).¶

Standardized methods are generic; that is, they are potentially applicable to any resource, not just one particular media type, kind of resource, or application. As such, it is preferred that new methods be registered in a document that isn't specific to a single application or data format, since orthogonal technologies deserve orthogonal specification.¶

Since message parsing (Section 3.3 of [MESSGNG]) needs to be independent of method semantics (aside from responses to HEAD), definitions of new methods cannot change the parsing algorithm or prohibit the presence of a message body on either the request or the response message. Definitions of new methods can specify that only a zero-length message body is allowed by requiring a Content-Length header field with a value of "0".¶

A new method definition needs to indicate whether it is safe (Section 4.2.1), idempotent (Section 4.2.2), cacheable (Section 4.2.3), what semantics are to be associated with the payload body if any is present in the request and what refinements the method makes to header field or status code semantics. If the new method is cacheable, its definition ought to describe how, and under what conditions, a cache can store a response and use it to satisfy a subsequent request. The new method ought to describe whether it can be made conditional (Section 5.2) and, if so, how a server responds when the condition is false. Likewise, if the new method might have some use for partial response semantics ([RANGERQ]), it ought to document this, too.¶

A registration MUST include the following fields: ¶

• Status Code (3 digits)
• Short Description
• Pointer to specification text

Values to be added to the HTTP status code namespace require IETF Review (see [RFC5226], Section 4.1).¶

When it is necessary to express semantics for a response that are not defined by current status codes, a new status code can be registered. Status codes are generic; they are potentially applicable to any resource, not just one particular media type, kind of resource, or application of HTTP. As such, it is preferred that new status codes be registered in a document that isn't specific to a single application.¶

New status codes are required to fall under one of the categories defined in Section 6. To allow existing parsers to process the response message, new status codes cannot disallow a payload, although they can mandate a zero-length payload body.¶

Proposals for new status codes that are not yet widely deployed ought to avoid allocating a specific number for the code until there is clear consensus that it will be registered; instead, early drafts can use a notation such as "4NN", or "3N0" .. "3N9", to indicate the class of the proposed status code(s) without consuming a number prematurely.¶

The definition of a new status code ought to explain the request conditions that would cause a response containing that status code (e.g., combinations of request header fields and/or method(s)) along with any dependencies on response header fields (e.g., what fields are required, what fields can modify the semantics, and what header field semantics are further refined when used with the new status code).¶

The definition of a new status code ought to specify whether or not it is cacheable. Note that all status codes can be cached if the response they occur in has explicit freshness information; however, status codes that are defined as being cacheable are allowed to be cached without explicit freshness information. Likewise, the definition of a status code can place constraints upon cache behavior. See [CACHING] for more information.¶

Finally, the definition of a new status code ought to indicate whether the payload has any implied association with an identified resource (Section 3.1.4.1).¶

Header fields are key:value pairs that can be used to communicate data about the message, its payload, the target resource, or the connection (i.e., control data). See Section 3.2 of [MESSGNG] for a general definition of header field syntax in HTTP messages.¶

The requirements for header field names are defined in [BCP90].¶

Authors of specifications defining new fields are advised to keep the name as short as practical and not to prefix the name with "X-" unless the header field will never be used on the Internet. (The "X-" prefix idiom has been extensively misused in practice; it was intended to only be used as a mechanism for avoiding name collisions inside proprietary software or intranet processing, since the prefix would ensure that private names never collide with a newly registered Internet name; see [BCP178] for further information).¶

New header field values typically have their syntax defined using ABNF ([RFC5234]), using the extension defined in Section 7 of [MESSGNG] as necessary, and are usually constrained to the range of US-ASCII characters. Header fields needing a greater range of characters can use an encoding such as the one defined in [RFC5987].¶

Leading and trailing whitespace in raw field values is removed upon field parsing (Section 3.2.4 of [MESSGNG]). Field definitions where leading or trailing whitespace in values is significant will have to use a container syntax such as quoted-string (Section 3.2.6 of [MESSGNG]).¶

Because commas (",") are used as a generic delimiter between field-values, they need to be treated with care if they are allowed in the field-value. Typically, components that might contain a comma are protected with double-quotes using the quoted-string ABNF production.¶

Note that double-quote delimiters almost always are used with the quoted-string production; using a different syntax inside double-quotes will likely cause unnecessary confusion.¶

Many header fields use a format including (case-insensitively) named parameters (for instance, Content-Type, defined in Section 3.1.1.5). Allowing both unquoted (token) and quoted (quoted-string) syntax for the parameter value enables recipients to use existing parser components. When allowing both forms, the meaning of a parameter value ought to be independent of the syntax used for it (for an example, see the notes on parameter handling for media types in Section 3.1.1.1).¶

Authors of specifications defining new header fields are advised to consider documenting: ¶

• Whether the field is a single value or whether it can be a list (delimited by commas; see Section 3.2 of [MESSGNG]).

  If it does not use the list syntax, document how to treat messages where the field occurs multiple times (a sensible default would be to ignore the field, but this might not always be the right choice).

  Note that intermediaries and software libraries might combine multiple header field instances into a single one, despite the field's definition not allowing the list syntax. A robust format enables recipients to discover these situations (good example: "Content-Type", as the comma can only appear inside quoted strings; bad example: "Location", as a comma can occur inside a URI).

• Under what conditions the header field can be used; e.g., only in responses or requests, in all messages, only on responses to a particular request method, etc.

• Whether the field should be stored by origin servers that understand it upon a PUT request.

• Whether the field semantics are further refined by the context, such as by existing request methods or status codes.

• Whether it is appropriate to list the field-name in the Connection header field (i.e., if the header field is to be hop-by-hop; see Section 6.1 of [MESSGNG]).

• Under what conditions intermediaries are allowed to insert, delete, or modify the field's value.

• Whether it is appropriate to list the field-name in a Vary response header field (e.g., when the request header field is used by an origin server's content selection algorithm; see Section 7.1.4).

• Whether the header field is useful or allowable in trailers (see Section 4.1 of [MESSGNG]).

• Whether the header field ought to be preserved across redirects.

• Whether it introduces any additional security considerations, such as disclosure of privacy-related data.

The change controller for the above registrations is: "IETF ([email protected]) - Internet Engineering Task Force".¶

Content coding registrations MUST include the following fields: ¶

• Name
• Description
• Pointer to specification text

Names of content codings MUST NOT overlap with names of transfer codings (Section 4 of [MESSGNG]), unless the encoding transformation is identical (as is the case for the compression codings defined in Section 4.2 of [MESSGNG]).¶

Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see Section 4.1 of [RFC5226]) and MUST conform to the purpose of content coding defined in this section.¶