On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:50:13 +0100, Julian Reschke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
1.2 Conformance
"conforming implementation
A user agent must behave as described in this specification in
order to be considered conformant even when faced with non-conforming
scripts."
So is an implementation that violates a SHOULD-level requirement
conforming?
Yes. If it has good reasons to do so. See RFC 2119.
2.1. Members of the XMLHttpRequest Object
"When method case-insensitively matches GET, POST, HEAD, PUT or DELETE
user agents MUST use the uppercase equivalent instead."
I know this is for compatibility with some broken implementations.
This is for compatibility with the web.
[...] If this is to stay, the set of affected method names should be
revisited. Do they all need to be on this list?
Feedback indicated that they should all be in the list, yes.
"The syntax for the user or password arguments depends on the scheme
being used. If the syntax for either is incorrect per the production
given in the relevant scheme user agents must throw a SYNTAX_ERR
exception. The user and password must be encoded using the encoding
specified by the scheme. If the scheme fails to specify an encoding they
must be encoded using UTF-8."
I think this has been mentioned before: does this reflect what today's
implementations do for basic and digest?
I don't think so.
Also: s/scheme/authentication scheme/.
Done.
"Otherwise, if the header argument does not match any of the listed
headers and already has a value that value must be retained. User
agents may either use multiple headers, combine the values or use a
combination of those (section 4.2, RFC 2616). [RFC2616]"
Why doesn't the preceding list contain other headers known not to have
that format? (c-ext, ext (RFC2774), cookie, cookie2 (RFC2965), if,
lock-token, status-uri (RFC2518), label (RFC3253),
apply-to-redirect-ref, redirect-ref (RFC4437), ordering-type (RFC3648)).
I added these, but I'm not convinced this list is a good idea anymore...
Firefox seems to always replace, Internet Explorer always merges headers.
Only Opera seems to have the logic as described by the specification. Not
sure about Safari. Tests are here:
http://tc.labs.opera.com/apis/XMLHttpRequest/setRequestHeader/
(The above mentioned headers don't appear to be supported by Opera in this
way, fwiw.)
It seems to me that it would be wise for the specification to specify a
way to remove a header, so that list-typed headers can be set to a known
value reliably (preferably removeRequestHeader() to remove a header, and
getRequestHeader() to check the current value).
I already mentioned that this will be considered for a future version.
That hasn't changed.
"If the response is an HTTP redirect (status code 301, 302, 303 or 307),
then it MUST be transparently followed (unless it violates security,
infinite loop precautions or the scheme isn't supported). Note that HTTP
([RFC2616]) places requirements on user agents regarding the
preservation of the request method during redirects, and also requires
users to be notified of certain kinds of automatic redirections."
To follow a redirect on a non-safe method without the user's consent is
forbidden in HTTP (see RFC2616, 10.2). No, notification is not
sufficient. And yes, this also applies to POST.
What text would you like us to use instead?
"If the user agent supports HTTP State Mangement it should persist,
discard and send cookies (as received in the Set-Cookie and Set-Cookie2
response headers, and sent in the Cookie header) as applicable.
[RFC2965]"
s/State Mangement/State Management/
Fixed.
My main other issue with this spec that it is silent about the
recommended behaviour for unsafe methods, about which RFC2616 says in
Section 9.1.1
(<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#rfc.section.9.1.1>):
"Implementors should be aware that the software represents the user in
their interactions over the Internet, and should be careful to allow the
user to be aware of any actions they might take which may have an
unexpected significance to themselves or others.
In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD
methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than
retrieval. These methods ought to be considered "safe". This allows user
agents to represent other methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a
special way, so that the user is made aware of the fact that a possibly
unsafe action is being requested."
Thus, allowing a web page to submit a PUT, POST or DELETE request
without user interaction seems to be a very dangerous thing to me, and
the spec should point that out (see also
<http://ietf.osafoundation.org:8080/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=237>).
I'm not sure this is much of an issue given the same-origin nature of the
object. However, I might be mistaken...
--
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>
