Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R.

Fielding, Editor
Request for Comments: 9110 Adobe
Obsoletes: 2818, 7230, 7231, 7232, 7233, 7235, 7538, M. Nottingham,
7615, 7694 Editor
STD: 97 Fastly
Updates: 3864 J. Reschke, Editor
Category: Standards Track greenbytes
ISSN: 2070-1721 June 2022

HTTP Semantics

Abstract
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless
application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative,
hypertext information systems. This document describes the
overall architecture of HTTP, establishes common terminology,
and defines aspects of the protocol that are shared by all
versions. In this definition are core protocol elements,
extensibility mechanisms, and the "http" and "https" Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI) schemes.

This document updates RFC 3864 and obsoletes RFCs 2818,

7231, 7232, 7233, 7235, 7538, 7615, 7694, and portions of
7230.

Status of This Memo INTERNET STANDARD

This is an Internet Standards Track This document has
document. errata.

This document is a product of the Internet

Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF
community. It has received public review and has been approved for
publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further
information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and
how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc9110.

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1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose
1.2. History and Evolution
1.3. Core Semantics
1.4. Specifications Obsoleted by This Document
2. Conformance
2.1. Syntax Notation
2.2. Requirements Notation
 2.3. Length Requirements
2.4. Error Handling
2.5. Protocol Version
3. Terminology and Core Concepts
3.1. Resources
3.2. Representations
3.3. Connections, Clients, and Servers
3.4. Messages
3.5. User Agents
3.6. Origin Server
3.7. Intermediaries
3.8. Caches
3.9. Example Message Exchange
4. Identifiers in HTTP
4.1. URI References
4.2. HTTP-Related URI Schemes
4.2.1. http URI Scheme
4.2.2. https URI Scheme
4.2.3. http(s) Normalization and Comparison
4.2.4. Deprecation of userinfo in http(s) URIs
4.2.5. http(s) References with Fragment Identifiers
4.3. Authoritative Access
4.3.1. URI Origin
4.3.2. http Origins
4.3.3. https Origins
4.3.4. https Certificate Verification
4.3.5. IP-ID Reference Identity
5. Fields
5.1. Field Names
5.2. Field Lines and Combined Field Value
5.3. Field Order
5.4. Field Limits
5.5. Field Values
5.6. Common Rules for Defining Field Values
5.6.1. Lists (#rule ABNF Extension)
5.6.1.1. Sender Requirements
5.6.1.2. Recipient Requirements
5.6.2. Tokens
5.6.3. Whitespace
5.6.4. Quoted Strings
 5.6.5. Comments
5.6.6. Parameters
5.6.7. Date/Time Formats
6. Message Abstraction
6.1. Framing and Completeness
6.2. Control Data
6.3. Header Fields
6.4. Content
6.4.1. Content Semantics
6.4.2. Identifying Content
6.5. Trailer Fields
6.5.1. Limitations on Use of Trailers
6.5.2. Processing Trailer Fields
6.6. Message Metadata
6.6.1. Date
6.6.2. Trailer
7. Routing HTTP Messages
7.1. Determining the Target Resource
7.2. Host and :authority
7.3. Routing Inbound Requests
7.3.1. To a Cache
7.3.2. To a Proxy
7.3.3. To the Origin
7.4. Rejecting Misdirected Requests
7.5. Response Correlation
7.6. Message Forwarding
7.6.1. Connection
7.6.2. Max-Forwards
7.6.3. Via
7.7. Message Transformations
7.8. Upgrade
8. Representation Data and Metadata
8.1. Representation Data
8.2. Representation Metadata
8.3. Content-Type
8.3.1. Media Type
8.3.2. Charset
8.3.3. Multipart Types
8.4. Content-Encoding
8.4.1. Content Codings
 8.4.1.1. Compress Coding
8.4.1.2. Deflate Coding
8.4.1.3. Gzip Coding
8.5. Content-Language
8.5.1. Language Tags
8.6. Content-Length
8.7. Content-Location
8.8. Validator Fields
8.8.1. Weak versus Strong
8.8.2. Last-Modified
8.8.2.1. Generation
8.8.2.2. Comparison
8.8.3. ETag
8.8.3.1. Generation
8.8.3.2. Comparison
8.8.3.3. Example: Entity Tags Varying on Content-
Negotiated Resources
9. Methods
9.1. Overview
9.2. Common Method Properties
9.2.1. Safe Methods
9.2.2. Idempotent Methods
9.2.3. Methods and Caching
9.3. Method Definitions
9.3.1. GET
9.3.2. HEAD
9.3.3. POST
9.3.4. PUT
9.3.5. DELETE
9.3.6. CONNECT
9.3.7. OPTIONS
9.3.8. TRACE
10. Message Context
10.1. Request Context Fields
10.1.1. Expect
10.1.2. From
10.1.3. Referer
10.1.4. TE
10.1.5. User-Agent
10.2. Response Context Fields
 10.2.1. Allow
10.2.2. Location
10.2.3. Retry-After
10.2.4. Server
11. HTTP Authentication
11.1. Authentication Scheme
11.2. Authentication Parameters
11.3. Challenge and Response
11.4. Credentials
11.5. Establishing a Protection Space (Realm)
11.6. Authenticating Users to Origin Servers
11.6.1. WWW-Authenticate
11.6.2. Authorization
11.6.3. Authentication-Info
11.7. Authenticating Clients to Proxies
11.7.1. Proxy-Authenticate
11.7.2. Proxy-Authorization
11.7.3. Proxy-Authentication-Info
12. Content Negotiation
12.1. Proactive Negotiation
12.2. Reactive Negotiation
12.3. Request Content Negotiation
12.4. Content Negotiation Field Features
12.4.1. Absence
12.4.2. Quality Values
12.4.3. Wildcard Values
12.5. Content Negotiation Fields
12.5.1. Accept
12.5.2. Accept-Charset
12.5.3. Accept-Encoding
12.5.4. Accept-Language
12.5.5. Vary
13. Conditional Requests
13.1. Preconditions
13.1.1. If-Match
13.1.2. If-None-Match
13.1.3. If-Modified-Since
13.1.4. If-Unmodified-Since
13.1.5. If-Range
13.2. Evaluation of Preconditions
 13.2.1. When to Evaluate
13.2.2. Precedence of Preconditions
14. Range Requests
14.1. Range Units
14.1.1. Range Specifiers
14.1.2. Byte Ranges
14.2. Range
14.3. Accept-Ranges
14.4. Content-Range
14.5. Partial PUT
14.6. Media Type multipart/byteranges
15. Status Codes
15.1. Overview of Status Codes
15.2. Informational 1xx
15.2.1. 100 Continue
15.2.2. 101 Switching Protocols
15.3. Successful 2xx
15.3.1. 200 OK
15.3.2. 201 Created
15.3.3. 202 Accepted
15.3.4. 203 Non-Authoritative Information
15.3.5. 204 No Content
15.3.6. 205 Reset Content
15.3.7. 206 Partial Content
15.3.7.1. Single Part
15.3.7.2. Multiple Parts
15.3.7.3. Combining Parts
15.4. Redirection 3xx
15.4.1. 300 Multiple Choices
15.4.2. 301 Moved Permanently
15.4.3. 302 Found
15.4.4. 303 See Other
15.4.5. 304 Not Modified
15.4.6. 305 Use Proxy
15.4.7. 306 (Unused)
15.4.8. 307 Temporary Redirect
15.4.9. 308 Permanent Redirect
15.5. Client Error 4xx
15.5.1. 400 Bad Request
15.5.2. 401 Unauthorized
 15.5.3. 402 Payment Required
15.5.4. 403 Forbidden
15.5.5. 404 Not Found
15.5.6. 405 Method Not Allowed
15.5.7. 406 Not Acceptable
15.5.8. 407 Proxy Authentication Required
15.5.9. 408 Request Timeout
15.5.10. 409 Conflict
15.5.11. 410 Gone
15.5.12. 411 Length Required
15.5.13. 412 Precondition Failed
15.5.14. 413 Content Too Large
15.5.15. 414 URI Too Long
15.5.16. 415 Unsupported Media Type
15.5.17. 416 Range Not Satisfiable
15.5.18. 417 Expectation Failed
15.5.19. 418 (Unused)
15.5.20. 421 Misdirected Request
15.5.21. 422 Unprocessable Content
15.5.22. 426 Upgrade Required
15.6. Server Error 5xx
15.6.1. 500 Internal Server Error
15.6.2. 501 Not Implemented
15.6.3. 502 Bad Gateway
15.6.4. 503 Service Unavailable
15.6.5. 504 Gateway Timeout
15.6.6. 505 HTTP Version Not Supported
16. Extending HTTP
16.1. Method Extensibility
16.1.1. Method Registry
16.1.2. Considerations for New Methods
16.2. Status Code Extensibility
16.2.1. Status Code Registry
16.2.2. Considerations for New Status Codes
16.3. Field Extensibility
16.3.1. Field Name Registry
16.3.2. Considerations for New Fields
16.3.2.1. Considerations for New Field Names
16.3.2.2. Considerations for New Field Values
16.4. Authentication Scheme Extensibility
 16.4.1. Authentication Scheme Registry
16.4.2. Considerations for New Authentication Schemes
16.5. Range Unit Extensibility
16.5.1. Range Unit Registry
16.5.2. Considerations for New Range Units
16.6. Content Coding Extensibility
16.6.1. Content Coding Registry
16.6.2. Considerations for New Content Codings
16.7. Upgrade Token Registry
17. Security Considerations
17.1. Establishing Authority
17.2. Risks of Intermediaries
17.3. Attacks Based on File and Path Names
17.4. Attacks Based on Command, Code, or Query Injection
17.5. Attacks via Protocol Element Length
17.6. Attacks Using Shared-Dictionary Compression
17.7. Disclosure of Personal Information
17.8. Privacy of Server Log Information
17.9. Disclosure of Sensitive Information in URIs
17.10. Application Handling of Field Names
17.11. Disclosure of Fragment after Redirects
17.12. Disclosure of Product Information
17.13. Browser Fingerprinting
17.14. Validator Retention
17.15. Denial-of-Service Attacks Using Range
17.16. Authentication Considerations
17.16.1. Confidentiality of Credentials
17.16.2. Credentials and Idle Clients
17.16.3. Protection Spaces
17.16.4. Additional Response Fields
18. IANA Considerations
18.1. URI Scheme Registration
18.2. Method Registration
18.3. Status Code Registration
18.4. Field Name Registration
18.5. Authentication Scheme Registration
18.6. Content Coding Registration
18.7. Range Unit Registration
18.8. Media Type Registration
18.9. Port Registration
 18.10. Upgrade Token Registration
19. References
19.1. Normative References
19.2. Informative References
Appendix A. Collected ABNF
Appendix B. Changes from Previous RFCs
B.1. Changes from RFC 2818
B.2. Changes from RFC 7230
B.3. Changes from RFC 7231
B.4. Changes from RFC 7232
B.5. Changes from RFC 7233
B.6. Changes from RFC 7235
B.7. Changes from RFC 7538
B.8. Changes from RFC 7615
B.9. Changes from RFC 7694
Acknowledgements
Index
Authors' Addresses

1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a family of stateless,
application-level, request/response protocols that share a generic
interface, extensible semantics, and self-descriptive messages to enable
flexible interaction with network-based hypertext information systems.

HTTP hides the details of how a service is implemented by presenting a

uniform interface to clients that is independent of the types of resources
provided. Likewise, servers do not need to be aware of each client's
purpose: a request can be considered in isolation rather than being
associated with a specific type of client or a predetermined sequence of
application steps. This allows general-purpose implementations to be
used effectively in many different contexts, reduces interaction
complexity, and enables independent evolution over time.

HTTP is also designed for use as an intermediation protocol, wherein

proxies and gateways can translate non-HTTP information systems into a
more generic interface.

One consequence of this flexibility is that the protocol cannot be defined

in terms of what occurs behind the interface. Instead, we are limited to
defining the syntax of communication, the intent of received
communication, and the expected behavior of recipients. If the
communication is considered in isolation, then successful actions ought
to be reflected in corresponding changes to the observable interface
provided by servers. However, since multiple clients might act in parallel
and perhaps at cross-purposes, we cannot require that such changes be
observable beyond the scope of a single response.

1.2. History and Evolution

HTTP has been the primary information transfer protocol for the World
Wide Web since its introduction in 1990. It began as a trivial mechanism
for low-latency requests, with a single method (GET) to request transfer
of a presumed hypertext document identified by a given pathname. As
the Web grew, HTTP was extended to enclose requests and responses
within messages, transfer arbitrary data formats using MIME-like media
types, and route requests through intermediaries. These protocols were
eventually defined as HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1.0 (see [HTTP/1.0]).

HTTP/1.1 was designed to refine the protocol's features while retaining

compatibility with the existing text-based messaging syntax, improving
its interoperability, scalability, and robustness across the Internet. This
included length-based data delimiters for both fixed and dynamic
(chunked) content, a consistent framework for content negotiation,
opaque validators for conditional requests, cache controls for better
cache consistency, range requests for partial updates, and default
persistent connections. HTTP/1.1 was introduced in 1995 and published
on the Standards Track in 1997 [RFC2068], revised in 1999 [RFC2616],
and revised again in 2014 ([RFC7230] through [RFC7235]).

HTTP/2 ([HTTP/2]) introduced a multiplexed session layer on top of the

existing TLS and TCP protocols for exchanging concurrent HTTP
messages with efficient field compression and server push. HTTP/3
([HTTP/3]) provides greater independence for concurrent messages by
using QUIC as a secure multiplexed transport over UDP instead of TCP.

All three major versions of HTTP rely on the semantics defined by this
document. They have not obsoleted each other because each one has
specific benefits and limitations depending on the context of use.
Implementations are expected to choose the most appropriate transport
and messaging syntax for their particular context.

This revision of HTTP separates the definition of semantics (this

document) and caching ([CACHING]) from the current HTTP/1.1
messaging syntax ([HTTP/1.1]) to allow each major protocol version to
progress independently while referring to the same core semantics.

1.3. Core Semantics

HTTP provides a uniform interface for interacting with a resource
(Section 3.1) — regardless of its type, nature, or implementation — by
sending messages that manipulate or transfer representations (Section
3.2).

Each message is either a request or a response. A client constructs

request messages that communicate its intentions and routes those
messages toward an identified origin server. A server listens for requests,
parses each message received, interprets the message semantics in
relation to the identified target resource, and responds to that request
with one or more response messages. The client examines received
responses to see if its intentions were carried out, determining what to
do next based on the status codes and content received.

HTTP semantics include the intentions defined by each request method

(Section 9), extensions to those semantics that might be described in
request header fields, status codes that describe the response (Section
15), and other control data and resource metadata that might be given
in response fields.

Semantics also include representation metadata that describe how

content is intended to be interpreted by a recipient, request header
fields that might influence content selection, and the various selection
algorithms that are collectively referred to as content negotiation (Section
12).

1.4. Specifications Obsoleted by This

Document
Title Reference See
HTTP Over TLS [RFC2818] B.1

Table 1
Title Reference See
HTTP/1.1 Message Syntax and Routing [*] [RFC7230] B.2
HTTP/1.1 Semantics and Content [RFC7231] B.3
HTTP/1.1 Conditional Requests [RFC7232] B.4
HTTP/1.1 Range Requests [RFC7233] B.5
HTTP/1.1 Authentication [RFC7235] B.6
HTTP Status Code 308 (Permanent Redirect) [RFC7538] B.7
HTTP Authentication-Info and Proxy-
[RFC7615] B.8
Authentication-Info Response Header Fields
HTTP Client-Initiated Content-Encoding [RFC7694] B.9

[*] This document only obsoletes the portions of RFC 7230 that are
independent of the HTTP/1.1 messaging syntax and connection
management; the remaining bits of RFC 7230 are obsoleted by
"HTTP/1.1" [HTTP/1.1].

2. Conformance
2.1. Syntax Notation
This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
notation of [RFC5234], extended with the notation for case-sensitivity in
strings defined in [RFC7405].

It also uses a list extension, defined in Section 5.6.1, that allows for
compact definition of comma-separated lists using a "#" operator
(similar to how the "*" operator indicates repetition). Appendix A shows
the collected grammar with all list operators expanded to standard ABNF
notation.

As a convention, ABNF rule names prefixed with "obs-" denote obsolete

grammar rules that appear for historical reasons.

The following core rules are included by reference, as defined in

Appendix B.1 of [RFC5234]: ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return), CRLF
(CR LF), CTL (controls), DIGIT (decimal 0-9), DQUOTE (double quote),
HEXDIG (hexadecimal 0-9/A-F/a-f), HTAB (horizontal tab), LF (line feed),
OCTET (any 8-bit sequence of data), SP (space), and VCHAR (any visible
US-ASCII character).

Section 5.6 defines some generic syntactic components for field values.
This specification uses the terms "character", "character encoding
scheme", "charset", and "protocol element" as they are defined in
[RFC6365].

2.2. Requirements Notation

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT
RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be
interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only
when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

This specification targets conformance criteria according to the role of a

participant in HTTP communication. Hence, requirements are placed on
senders, recipients, clients, servers, user agents, intermediaries, origin
servers, proxies, gateways, or caches, depending on what behavior is
being constrained by the requirement. Additional requirements are
placed on implementations, resource owners, and protocol element
registrations when they apply beyond the scope of a single
communication.

The verb "generate" is used instead of "send" where a requirement

applies only to implementations that create the protocol element, rather
than an implementation that forwards a received element downstream.

An implementation is considered conformant if it complies with all of the

requirements associated with the roles it partakes in HTTP.

A sender MUST NOT generate protocol elements that do not match the
grammar defined by the corresponding ABNF rules. Within a given
message, a sender MUST NOT generate protocol elements or syntax
alternatives that are only allowed to be generated by participants in
other roles (i.e., a role that the sender does not have for that message).

Conformance to HTTP includes both conformance to the particular

messaging syntax of the protocol version in use and conformance to the
semantics of protocol elements sent. For example, a client that claims
conformance to HTTP/1.1 but fails to recognize the features required of
HTTP/1.1 recipients will fail to interoperate with servers that adjust their
responses in accordance with those claims. Features that reflect user
choices, such as content negotiation and user-selected extensions, can
impact application behavior beyond the protocol stream; sending
protocol elements that inaccurately reflect a user's choices will confuse
the user and inhibit choice.

When an implementation fails semantic conformance, recipients of that

implementation's messages will eventually develop workarounds to
adjust their behavior accordingly. A recipient MAY employ such
workarounds while remaining conformant to this protocol if the
workarounds are limited to the implementations at fault. For example,
servers often scan portions of the User-Agent field value, and user
agents often scan the Server field value, to adjust their own behavior
with respect to known bugs or poorly chosen defaults.

2.3. Length Requirements

A recipient SHOULD parse a received protocol element defensively, with
only marginal expectations that the element will conform to its ABNF
grammar and fit within a reasonable buffer size.

HTTP does not have specific length limitations for many of its protocol
elements because the lengths that might be appropriate will vary widely,
depending on the deployment context and purpose of the
implementation. Hence, interoperability between senders and recipients
depends on shared expectations regarding what is a reasonable length
for each protocol element. Furthermore, what is commonly understood
to be a reasonable length for some protocol elements has changed over
the course of the past three decades of HTTP use and is expected to
continue changing in the future.

At a minimum, a recipient MUST be able to parse and process protocol

element lengths that are at least as long as the values that it generates
for those same protocol elements in other messages. For example, an
origin server that publishes very long URI references to its own resources
needs to be able to parse and process those same references when
received as a target URI.

Many received protocol elements are only parsed to the extent necessary
to identify and forward that element downstream. For example, an
intermediary might parse a received field into its field name and field
value components, but then forward the field without further parsing
inside the field value.

2.4. Error Handling

A recipient MUST interpret a received protocol element according to the
semantics defined for it by this specification, including extensions to this
specification, unless the recipient has determined (through experience or
configuration) that the sender incorrectly implements what is implied by
those semantics. For example, an origin server might disregard the
contents of a received Accept-Encoding header field if inspection of the
User-Agent header field indicates a specific implementation version that
is known to fail on receipt of certain content codings.

Unless noted otherwise, a recipient MAY attempt to recover a usable

protocol element from an invalid construct. HTTP does not define
specific error handling mechanisms except when they have a direct
impact on security, since different applications of the protocol require
different error handling strategies. For example, a Web browser might
wish to transparently recover from a response where the Location header
field doesn't parse according to the ABNF, whereas a systems control
client might consider any form of error recovery to be dangerous.

Some requests can be automatically retried by a client in the event of an

underlying connection failure, as described in Section 9.2.2.

2.5. Protocol Version

HTTP's version number consists of two decimal digits separated by a "."
(period or decimal point). The first digit (major version) indicates the
messaging syntax, whereas the second digit (minor version) indicates the
highest minor version within that major version to which the sender is
conformant (able to understand for future communication).

While HTTP's core semantics don't change between protocol versions,

their expression "on the wire" can change, and so the HTTP version
number changes when incompatible changes are made to the wire
format. Additionally, HTTP allows incremental, backwards-compatible
changes to be made to the protocol without changing its version
through the use of defined extension points (Section 16).

The protocol version as a whole indicates the sender's conformance with

the set of requirements laid out in that version's corresponding
specification(s). For example, the version "HTTP/1.1" is defined by the
combined specifications of this document, "HTTP Caching" [CACHING],
and "HTTP/1.1" [HTTP/1.1].
HTTP's major version number is incremented when an incompatible
message syntax is introduced. The minor number is incremented when
changes made to the protocol have the effect of adding to the message
semantics or implying additional capabilities of the sender.

The minor version advertises the sender's communication capabilities

even when the sender is only using a backwards-compatible subset of
the protocol, thereby letting the recipient know that more advanced
features can be used in response (by servers) or in future requests (by
clients).

When a major version of HTTP does not define any minor versions, the
minor version "0" is implied. The "0" is used when referring to that
protocol within elements that require a minor version identifier.

3. Terminology and Core Concepts

HTTP was created for the World Wide Web (WWW) architecture and has
evolved over time to support the scalability needs of a worldwide
hypertext system. Much of that architecture is reflected in the
terminology used to define HTTP.

3.1. Resources
The target of an HTTP request is called a resource. HTTP does not limit
the nature of a resource; it merely defines an interface that might be
used to interact with resources. Most resources are identified by a
Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), as described in Section 4.

One design goal of HTTP is to separate resource identification from

request semantics, which is made possible by vesting the request
semantics in the request method (Section 9) and a few request-
modifying header fields. A resource cannot treat a request in a manner
inconsistent with the semantics of the method of the request. For
example, though the URI of a resource might imply semantics that are
not safe, a client can expect the resource to avoid actions that are unsafe
when processing a request with a safe method (see Section 9.2.1).

HTTP relies upon the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) standard [URI] to
indicate the target resource (Section 7.1) and relationships between
resources.
3.2. Representations
A representation is information that is intended to reflect a past, current,
or desired state of a given resource, in a format that can be readily
communicated via the protocol. A representation consists of a set of
representation metadata and a potentially unbounded stream of
representation data (Section 8).

HTTP allows "information hiding" behind its uniform interface by

defining communication with respect to a transferable representation of
the resource state, rather than transferring the resource itself. This allows
the resource identified by a URI to be anything, including temporal
functions like "the current weather in Laguna Beach", while potentially
providing information that represents that resource at the time a
message is generated [REST].

The uniform interface is similar to a window through which one can

observe and act upon a thing only through the communication of
messages to an independent actor on the other side. A shared
abstraction is needed to represent ("take the place of") the current or
desired state of that thing in our communications. When a
representation is hypertext, it can provide both a representation of the
resource state and processing instructions that help guide the recipient's
future interactions.

A target resource might be provided with, or be capable of generating,

multiple representations that are each intended to reflect the resource's
current state. An algorithm, usually based on content negotiation
(Section 12), would be used to select one of those representations as
being most applicable to a given request. This selected representation
provides the data and metadata for evaluating conditional requests
(Section 13) and constructing the content for 200 (OK), 206 (Partial
Content), and 304 (Not Modified) responses to GET (Section 9.3.1).

3.3. Connections, Clients, and Servers

HTTP is a client/server protocol that operates over a reliable transport-
or session-layer connection.

An HTTP client is a program that establishes a connection to a server for

the purpose of sending one or more HTTP requests. An HTTP server is a
program that accepts connections in order to service HTTP requests by
sending HTTP responses.

The terms client and server refer only to the roles that these programs
perform for a particular connection. The same program might act as a
client on some connections and a server on others.

HTTP is defined as a stateless protocol, meaning that each request

message's semantics can be understood in isolation, and that the
relationship between connections and messages on them has no impact
on the interpretation of those messages. For example, a CONNECT
request (Section 9.3.6) or a request with the Upgrade header field
(Section 7.8) can occur at any time, not just in the first message on a
connection. Many implementations depend on HTTP's stateless design in
order to reuse proxied connections or dynamically load balance requests
across multiple servers.

As a result, a server MUST NOT assume that two requests on the same
connection are from the same user agent unless the connection is
secured and specific to that agent. Some non-standard HTTP extensions
(e.g., [RFC4559]) have been known to violate this requirement, resulting
in security and interoperability problems.

3.4. Messages
HTTP is a stateless request/response protocol for exchanging messages
across a connection. The terms sender and recipient refer to any
implementation that sends or receives a given message, respectively.

A client sends requests to a server in the form of a request message with

a method (Section 9) and request target (Section 7.1). The request might
also contain header fields (Section 6.3) for request modifiers, client
information, and representation metadata, content (Section 6.4) intended
for processing in accordance with the method, and trailer fields (Section
6.5) to communicate information collected while sending the content.

A server responds to a client's request by sending one or more response

messages, each including a status code (Section 15). The response might
also contain header fields for server information, resource metadata, and
representation metadata, content to be interpreted in accordance with
the status code, and trailer fields to communicate information collected
while sending the content.
3.5. User Agents
The term user agent refers to any of the various client programs that
initiate a request.

The most familiar form of user agent is the general-purpose Web

browser, but that's only a small percentage of implementations. Other
common user agents include spiders (web-traversing robots), command-
line tools, billboard screens, household appliances, scales, light bulbs,
firmware update scripts, mobile apps, and communication devices in a
multitude of shapes and sizes.

Being a user agent does not imply that there is a human user directly
interacting with the software agent at the time of a request. In many
cases, a user agent is installed or configured to run in the background
and save its results for later inspection (or save only a subset of those
results that might be interesting or erroneous). Spiders, for example, are
typically given a start URI and configured to follow certain behavior while
crawling the Web as a hypertext graph.

Many user agents cannot, or choose not to, make interactive suggestions
to their user or provide adequate warning for security or privacy
concerns. In the few cases where this specification requires reporting of
errors to the user, it is acceptable for such reporting to only be
observable in an error console or log file. Likewise, requirements that an
automated action be confirmed by the user before proceeding might be
met via advance configuration choices, run-time options, or simple
avoidance of the unsafe action; confirmation does not imply any specific
user interface or interruption of normal processing if the user has already
made that choice.

3.6. Origin Server

The term origin server refers to a program that can originate
authoritative responses for a given target resource.

The most familiar form of origin server are large public websites.
However, like user agents being equated with browsers, it is easy to be
misled into thinking that all origin servers are alike. Common origin
servers also include home automation units, configurable networking
components, office machines, autonomous robots, news feeds, traffic
cameras, real-time ad selectors, and video-on-demand platforms.
Most HTTP communication consists of a retrieval request (GET) for a
representation of some resource identified by a URI. In the simplest case,
this might be accomplished via a single bidirectional connection (===)
between the user agent (UA) and the origin server (O).

request >
UA ======================================= O
< response

3.7. Intermediaries
HTTP enables the use of intermediaries to satisfy requests through a
chain of connections. There are three common forms of HTTP
intermediary: proxy, gateway, and tunnel. In some cases, a single
intermediary might act as an origin server, proxy, gateway, or tunnel,
switching behavior based on the nature of each request.

> > > >

UA =========== A =========== B =========== C =========== O
< < < <

The figure above shows three intermediaries (A, B, and C) between the
user agent and origin server. A request or response message that travels
the whole chain will pass through four separate connections. Some HTTP
communication options might apply only to the connection with the
nearest, non-tunnel neighbor, only to the endpoints of the chain, or to
all connections along the chain. Although the diagram is linear, each
participant might be engaged in multiple, simultaneous communications.
For example, B might be receiving requests from many clients other than
A, and/or forwarding requests to servers other than C, at the same time
that it is handling A's request. Likewise, later requests might be sent
through a different path of connections, often based on dynamic
configuration for load balancing.

The terms upstream and downstream are used to describe directional

requirements in relation to the message flow: all messages flow from
upstream to downstream. The terms inbound and outbound are used to
describe directional requirements in relation to the request route:
inbound means "toward the origin server", whereas outbound means
"toward the user agent".

A proxy is a message-forwarding agent that is chosen by the client,

usually via local configuration rules, to receive requests for some type(s)
of absolute URI and attempt to satisfy those requests via translation
through the HTTP interface. Some translations are minimal, such as for
proxy requests for "http" URIs, whereas other requests might require
translation to and from entirely different application-level protocols.
Proxies are often used to group an organization's HTTP requests through
a common intermediary for the sake of security services, annotation
services, or shared caching. Some proxies are designed to apply
transformations to selected messages or content while they are being
forwarded, as described in Section 7.7.

A gateway (a.k.a. reverse proxy) is an intermediary that acts as an origin

server for the outbound connection but translates received requests and
forwards them inbound to another server or servers. Gateways are often
used to encapsulate legacy or untrusted information services, to improve
server performance through accelerator caching, and to enable
partitioning or load balancing of HTTP services across multiple machines.

All HTTP requirements applicable to an origin server also apply to the

outbound communication of a gateway. A gateway communicates with
inbound servers using any protocol that it desires, including private
extensions to HTTP that are outside the scope of this specification.
However, an HTTP-to-HTTP gateway that wishes to interoperate with
third-party HTTP servers needs to conform to user agent requirements
on the gateway's inbound connection.

A tunnel acts as a blind relay between two connections without changing

the messages. Once active, a tunnel is not considered a party to the
HTTP communication, though the tunnel might have been initiated by an
HTTP request. A tunnel ceases to exist when both ends of the relayed
connection are closed. Tunnels are used to extend a virtual connection
through an intermediary, such as when Transport Layer Security (TLS,
[TLS13]) is used to establish confidential communication through a
shared firewall proxy.

The above categories for intermediary only consider those acting as

participants in the HTTP communication. There are also intermediaries
that can act on lower layers of the network protocol stack, filtering or
redirecting HTTP traffic without the knowledge or permission of message
senders. Network intermediaries are indistinguishable (at a protocol
level) from an on-path attacker, often introducing security flaws or
interoperability problems due to mistakenly violating HTTP semantics.
For example, an interception proxy [RFC3040] (also commonly known as a
transparent proxy [RFC1919]) differs from an HTTP proxy because it is not
chosen by the client. Instead, an interception proxy filters or redirects
outgoing TCP port 80 packets (and occasionally other common port
traffic). Interception proxies are commonly found on public network
access points, as a means of enforcing account subscription prior to
allowing use of non-local Internet services, and within corporate firewalls
to enforce network usage policies.

3.8. Caches
A cache is a local store of previous response messages and the
subsystem that controls its message storage, retrieval, and deletion. A
cache stores cacheable responses in order to reduce the response time
and network bandwidth consumption on future, equivalent requests. Any
client or server MAY employ a cache, though a cache cannot be used
while acting as a tunnel.

The effect of a cache is that the request/response chain is shortened if

one of the participants along the chain has a cached response applicable
to that request. The following illustrates the resulting chain if B has a
cached copy of an earlier response from O (via C) for a request that has
not been cached by UA or A.

> >
UA =========== A =========== B - - - - - - C - - - - - - O
< <

A response is cacheable if a cache is allowed to store a copy of the

response message for use in answering subsequent requests. Even when
a response is cacheable, there might be additional constraints placed by
the client or by the origin server on when that cached response can be
used for a particular request. HTTP requirements for cache behavior and
cacheable responses are defined in [CACHING].

There is a wide variety of architectures and configurations of caches

deployed across the World Wide Web and inside large organizations.
These include national hierarchies of proxy caches to save bandwidth
and reduce latency, content delivery networks that use gateway caching
to optimize regional and global distribution of popular sites,
collaborative systems that broadcast or multicast cache entries, archives
of pre-fetched cache entries for use in off-line or high-latency
environments, and so on.

3.9. Example Message Exchange

The following example illustrates a typical HTTP/1.1 message exchange
for a GET request (Section 9.3.1) on the URI "http://www.example.com/
hello.txt":

Client request:

GET /hello.txt HTTP/1.1

User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
Host: www.example.com
Accept-Language: en, mi

Server response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT
ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 51
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/plain

Hello World! My content includes a trailing CRLF.

4. Identifiers in HTTP
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) [URI] are used throughout HTTP as
the means for identifying resources (Section 3.1).

4.1. URI References

URI references are used to target requests, indicate redirects, and define
relationships.

The definitions of "URI-reference", "absolute-URI", "relative-part",

"authority", "port", "host", "path-abempty", "segment", and "query" are
adopted from the URI generic syntax. An "absolute-path" rule is defined
for protocol elements that can contain a non-empty path component.
(This rule differs slightly from the path-abempty rule of RFC 3986, which
allows for an empty path, and path-absolute rule, which does not allow
paths that begin with "//".) A "partial-URI" rule is defined for protocol
elements that can contain a relative URI but not a fragment component.

URI-reference = <URI-reference, see [URI], Section 4.1>

absolute-URI = <absolute-URI, see [URI], Section 4.3>
relative-part = <relative-part, see [URI], Section 4.2>
authority = <authority, see [URI], Section 3.2>
uri-host = <host, see [URI], Section 3.2.2>
port = <port, see [URI], Section 3.2.3>
path-abempty = <path-abempty, see [URI], Section 3.3>
segment = <segment, see [URI], Section 3.3>
query = <query, see [URI], Section 3.4>

absolute-path = 1*( "/" segment )

partial-URI = relative-part [ "?" query ]

Each protocol element in HTTP that allows a URI reference will indicate in
its ABNF production whether the element allows any form of reference
(URI-reference), only a URI in absolute form (absolute-URI), only the path
and optional query components (partial-URI), or some combination of
the above. Unless otherwise indicated, URI references are parsed relative
to the target URI (Section 7.1).

It is RECOMMENDED that all senders and recipients support, at a

minimum, URIs with lengths of 8000 octets in protocol elements. Note
that this implies some structures and on-wire representations (for
example, the request line in HTTP/1.1) will necessarily be larger in some
cases.

4.2. HTTP-Related URI Schemes

IANA maintains the registry of URI Schemes [BCP35] at https://
www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/. Although requests might
target any URI scheme, the following schemes are inherent to HTTP
servers:

URI Scheme Description Section

http Hypertext Transfer Protocol 4.2.1
https Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure 4.2.2

Table 2
Note that the presence of an "http" or "https" URI does not imply that
there is always an HTTP server at the identified origin listening for
connections. Anyone can mint a URI, whether or not a server exists and
whether or not that server currently maps that identifier to a resource.
The delegated nature of registered names and IP addresses creates a
federated namespace whether or not an HTTP server is present.

4.2.1. http URI Scheme

The "http" URI scheme is hereby defined for minting identifiers within
the hierarchical namespace governed by a potential HTTP origin server
listening for TCP ([TCP]) connections on a given port.

http-URI = "http" "://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]

The origin server for an "http" URI is identified by the authority

component, which includes a host identifier ([URI], Section 3.2.2) and
optional port number ([URI], Section 3.2.3). If the port subcomponent is
empty or not given, TCP port 80 (the reserved port for WWW services) is
the default. The origin determines who has the right to respond
authoritatively to requests that target the identified resource, as defined
in Section 4.3.2.

A sender MUST NOT generate an "http" URI with an empty host

identifier. A recipient that processes such a URI reference MUST reject it
as invalid.

The hierarchical path component and optional query component identify

the target resource within that origin server's namespace.

4.2.2. https URI Scheme

The "https" URI scheme is hereby defined for minting identifiers within
the hierarchical namespace governed by a potential origin server
listening for TCP connections on a given port and capable of establishing
a TLS ([TLS13]) connection that has been secured for HTTP
communication. In this context, secured specifically means that the server
has been authenticated as acting on behalf of the identified authority
and all HTTP communication with that server has confidentiality and
integrity protection that is acceptable to both client and server.

https-URI = "https" "://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]

The origin server for an "https" URI is identified by the authority
component, which includes a host identifier ([URI], Section 3.2.2) and
optional port number ([URI], Section 3.2.3). If the port subcomponent is
empty or not given, TCP port 443 (the reserved port for HTTP over TLS) is
the default. The origin determines who has the right to respond
authoritatively to requests that target the identified resource, as defined
in Section 4.3.3.

A sender MUST NOT generate an "https" URI with an empty host

identifier. A recipient that processes such a URI reference MUST reject it
as invalid.

The hierarchical path component and optional query component identify

the target resource within that origin server's namespace.

A client MUST ensure that its HTTP requests for an "https" resource are
secured, prior to being communicated, and that it only accepts secured
responses to those requests. Note that the definition of what
cryptographic mechanisms are acceptable to client and server are usually
negotiated and can change over time.

Resources made available via the "https" scheme have no shared identity
with the "http" scheme. They are distinct origins with separate
namespaces. However, extensions to HTTP that are defined as applying
to all origins with the same host, such as the Cookie protocol [COOKIE],
allow information set by one service to impact communication with other
services within a matching group of host domains. Such extensions
ought to be designed with great care to prevent information obtained
from a secured connection being inadvertently exchanged within an
unsecured context.

4.2.3. http(s) Normalization and Comparison

URIs with an "http" or "https" scheme are normalized and compared
according to the methods defined in Section 6 of [URI], using the
defaults described above for each scheme.

HTTP does not require the use of a specific method for determining
equivalence. For example, a cache key might be compared as a simple
string, after syntax-based normalization, or after scheme-based
normalization.
Scheme-based normalization (Section 6.2.3 of [URI]) of "http" and "https"
URIs involves the following additional rules:

• If the port is equal to the default port for a scheme, the normal form
is to omit the port subcomponent.
• When not being used as the target of an OPTIONS request, an
empty path component is equivalent to an absolute path of "/", so
the normal form is to provide a path of "/" instead.
• The scheme and host are case-insensitive and normally provided in
lowercase; all other components are compared in a case-sensitive
manner.
• Characters other than those in the "reserved" set are equivalent to
their percent-encoded octets: the normal form is to not encode
them (see Sections 2.1 and 2.2 of [URI]).

For example, the following three URIs are equivalent:

http://example.com:80/~smith/home.html
http://EXAMPLE.com/%7Esmith/home.html
http://EXAMPLE.com:/%7esmith/home.html

Two HTTP URIs that are equivalent after normalization (using any
method) can be assumed to identify the same resource, and any HTTP
component MAY perform normalization. As a result, distinct resources
SHOULD NOT be identified by HTTP URIs that are equivalent after
normalization (using any method defined in Section 6.2 of [URI]).

4.2.4. Deprecation of userinfo in http(s) URIs

The URI generic syntax for authority also includes a userinfo
subcomponent ([URI], Section 3.2.1) for including user authentication
information in the URI. In that subcomponent, the use of the format
"user:password" is deprecated.

Some implementations make use of the userinfo component for internal

configuration of authentication information, such as within command
invocation options, configuration files, or bookmark lists, even though
such usage might expose a user identifier or password.

A sender MUST NOT generate the userinfo subcomponent (and its "@"
delimiter) when an "http" or "https" URI reference is generated within a
message as a target URI or field value.
Before making use of an "http" or "https" URI reference received from an
untrusted source, a recipient SHOULD parse for userinfo and treat its
presence as an error; it is likely being used to obscure the authority for
the sake of phishing attacks.

4.2.5. http(s) References with Fragment Identifiers

Fragment identifiers allow for indirect identification of a secondary
resource, independent of the URI scheme, as defined in Section 3.5 of
[URI]. Some protocol elements that refer to a URI allow inclusion of a
fragment, while others do not. They are distinguished by use of the
ABNF rule for elements where fragment is allowed; otherwise, a specific
rule that excludes fragments is used.

Note: The fragment identifier component is not part of the scheme

definition for a URI scheme (see Section 4.3 of [URI]), thus does not
appear in the ABNF definitions for the "http" and "https" URI schemes
above.

4.3. Authoritative Access

Authoritative access refers to dereferencing a given identifier, for the
sake of access to the identified resource, in a way that the client believes
is authoritative (controlled by the resource owner). The process for
determining whether access is granted is defined by the URI scheme and
often uses data within the URI components, such as the authority
component when the generic syntax is used. However, authoritative
access is not limited to the identified mechanism.

Section 4.3.1 defines the concept of an origin as an aid to such uses, and
the subsequent subsections explain how to establish that a peer has the
authority to represent an origin.

See Section 17.1 for security considerations related to establishing

authority.

4.3.1. URI Origin

The origin for a given URI is the triple of scheme, host, and port after
normalizing the scheme and host to lowercase and normalizing the port
to remove any leading zeros. If port is elided from the URI, the default
port for that scheme is used. For example, the URI
 https://Example.Com/happy.js

would have the origin

{ "https", "example.com", "443" }

which can also be described as the normalized URI prefix with port
always present:

https://example.com:443

Each origin defines its own namespace and controls how identifiers
within that namespace are mapped to resources. In turn, how the origin
responds to valid requests, consistently over time, determines the
semantics that users will associate with a URI, and the usefulness of
those semantics is what ultimately transforms these mechanisms into a
resource for users to reference and access in the future.

Two origins are distinct if they differ in scheme, host, or port. Even when
it can be verified that the same entity controls two distinct origins, the
two namespaces under those origins are distinct unless explicitly aliased
by a server authoritative for that origin.

Origin is also used within HTML and related Web protocols, beyond the
scope of this document, as described in [RFC6454].

4.3.2. http Origins

Although HTTP is independent of the transport protocol, the "http"
scheme (Section 4.2.1) is specific to associating authority with whomever
controls the origin server listening for TCP connections on the indicated
port of whatever host is identified within the authority component. This
is a very weak sense of authority because it depends on both client-
specific name resolution mechanisms and communication that might not
be secured from an on-path attacker. Nevertheless, it is a sufficient
minimum for binding "http" identifiers to an origin server for consistent
resolution within a trusted environment.

If the host identifier is provided as an IP address, the origin server is the

listener (if any) on the indicated TCP port at that IP address. If host is a
registered name, the registered name is an indirect identifier for use with
a name resolution service, such as DNS, to find an address for an
appropriate origin server.
When an "http" URI is used within a context that calls for access to the
indicated resource, a client MAY attempt access by resolving the host
identifier to an IP address, establishing a TCP connection to that address
on the indicated port, and sending over that connection an HTTP request
message containing a request target that matches the client's target URI
(Section 7.1).

If the server responds to such a request with a non-interim HTTP

response message, as described in Section 15, then that response is
considered an authoritative answer to the client's request.

Note, however, that the above is not the only means for obtaining an
authoritative response, nor does it imply that an authoritative response is
always necessary (see [CACHING]). For example, the Alt-Svc header field
[ALTSVC] allows an origin server to identify other services that are also
authoritative for that origin. Access to "http" identified resources might
also be provided by protocols outside the scope of this document.

4.3.3. https Origins

The "https" scheme (Section 4.2.2) associates authority based on the
ability of a server to use the private key corresponding to a certificate
that the client considers to be trustworthy for the identified origin server.
The client usually relies upon a chain of trust, conveyed from some
prearranged or configured trust anchor, to deem a certificate trustworthy
(Section 4.3.4).

In HTTP/1.1 and earlier, a client will only attribute authority to a server

when they are communicating over a successfully established and
secured connection specifically to that URI origin's host. The connection
establishment and certificate verification are used as proof of authority.

In HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, a client will attribute authority to a server when

they are communicating over a successfully established and secured
connection if the URI origin's host matches any of the hosts present in
the server's certificate and the client believes that it could open a
connection to that host for that URI. In practice, a client will make a DNS
query to check that the origin's host contains the same server IP address
as the established connection. This restriction can be removed by the
origin server sending an equivalent ORIGIN frame [RFC8336].

The request target's host and port value are passed within each HTTP
request, identifying the origin and distinguishing it from other
namespaces that might be controlled by the same server (Section 7.2). It
is the origin's responsibility to ensure that any services provided with
control over its certificate's private key are equally responsible for
managing the corresponding "https" namespaces or at least prepared to
reject requests that appear to have been misdirected (Section 7.4).

An origin server might be unwilling to process requests for certain target

URIs even when they have the authority to do so. For example, when a
host operates distinct services on different ports (e.g., 443 and 8000),
checking the target URI at the origin server is necessary (even after the
connection has been secured) because a network attacker might cause
connections for one port to be received at some other port. Failing to
check the target URI might allow such an attacker to replace a response
to one target URI (e.g., "https://example.com/foo") with a seemingly
authoritative response from the other port (e.g., "https://
example.com:8000/foo").

Note that the "https" scheme does not rely on TCP and the connected
port number for associating authority, since both are outside the secured
communication and thus cannot be trusted as definitive. Hence, the
HTTP communication might take place over any channel that has been
secured, as defined in Section 4.2.2, including protocols that don't use
TCP.

When an "https" URI is used within a context that calls for access to the
indicated resource, a client MAY attempt access by resolving the host
identifier to an IP address, establishing a TCP connection to that address
on the indicated port, securing the connection end-to-end by
successfully initiating TLS over TCP with confidentiality and integrity
protection, and sending over that connection an HTTP request message
containing a request target that matches the client's target URI (Section
7.1).

If the server responds to such a request with a non-interim HTTP

response message, as described in Section 15, then that response is
considered an authoritative answer to the client's request.

Note, however, that the above is not the only means for obtaining an
authoritative response, nor does it imply that an authoritative response is
always necessary (see [CACHING]).
4.3.4. https Certificate Verification
To establish a secured connection to dereference a URI, a client MUST
verify that the service's identity is an acceptable match for the URI's
origin server. Certificate verification is used to prevent server
impersonation by an on-path attacker or by an attacker that controls
name resolution. This process requires that a client be configured with a
set of trust anchors.

In general, a client MUST verify the service identity using the verification
process defined in Section 6 of [RFC6125]. The client MUST construct a
reference identity from the service's host: if the host is a literal IP address
(Section 4.3.5), the reference identity is an IP-ID, otherwise the host is a
name and the reference identity is a DNS-ID.

A reference identity of type CN-ID MUST NOT be used by clients. As

noted in Section 6.2.1 of [RFC6125], a reference identity of type CN-ID
might be used by older clients.

A client might be specially configured to accept an alternative form of

server identity verification. For example, a client might be connecting to
a server whose address and hostname are dynamic, with an expectation
that the service will present a specific certificate (or a certificate matching
some externally defined reference identity) rather than one matching the
target URI's origin.

In special cases, it might be appropriate for a client to simply ignore the

server's identity, but it must be understood that this leaves a connection
open to active attack.

If the certificate is not valid for the target URI's origin, a user agent MUST
either obtain confirmation from the user before proceeding (see Section
3.5) or terminate the connection with a bad certificate error. Automated
clients MUST log the error to an appropriate audit log (if available) and
SHOULD terminate the connection (with a bad certificate error).
Automated clients MAY provide a configuration setting that disables this
check, but MUST provide a setting which enables it.

4.3.5. IP-ID Reference Identity

A server that is identified using an IP address literal in the "host" field of
an "https" URI has a reference identity of type IP-ID. An IP version 4
address uses the "IPv4address" ABNF rule, and an IP version 6 address
uses the "IP-literal" production with the "IPv6address" option; see
Section 3.2.2 of [URI]. A reference identity of IP-ID contains the decoded
bytes of the IP address.

An IP version 4 address is 4 octets, and an IP version 6 address is 16

octets. Use of IP-ID is not defined for any other IP version. The iPAddress
choice in the certificate subjectAltName extension does not explicitly
include the IP version and so relies on the length of the address to
distinguish versions; see Section 4.2.1.6 of [RFC5280].

A reference identity of type IP-ID matches if the address is identical to an

iPAddress value of the subjectAltName extension of the certificate.

5. Fields
HTTP uses fields to provide data in the form of extensible name/value
pairs with a registered key namespace. Fields are sent and received
within the header and trailer sections of messages (Section 6).

5.1. Field Names

A field name labels the corresponding field value as having the
semantics defined by that name. For example, the Date header field is
defined in Section 6.6.1 as containing the origination timestamp for the
message in which it appears.

field-name = token

Field names are case-insensitive and ought to be registered within the

"Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name Registry"; see Section
16.3.1.

The interpretation of a field does not change between minor versions of

the same major HTTP version, though the default behavior of a recipient
in the absence of such a field can change. Unless specified otherwise,
fields are defined for all versions of HTTP. In particular, the Host and
Connection fields ought to be recognized by all HTTP implementations
whether or not they advertise conformance with HTTP/1.1.

New fields can be introduced without changing the protocol version if

their defined semantics allow them to be safely ignored by recipients
that do not recognize them; see Section 16.3.
A proxy MUST forward unrecognized header fields unless the field name
is listed in the Connection header field (Section 7.6.1) or the proxy is
specifically configured to block, or otherwise transform, such fields.
Other recipients SHOULD ignore unrecognized header and trailer fields.
Adhering to these requirements allows HTTP's functionality to be
extended without updating or removing deployed intermediaries.

5.2. Field Lines and Combined Field Value

Field sections are composed of any number of field lines, each with a
field name (see Section 5.1) identifying the field, and a field line value
that conveys data for that instance of the field.

When a field name is only present once in a section, the combined field
value for that field consists of the corresponding field line value. When a
field name is repeated within a section, its combined field value consists
of the list of corresponding field line values within that section,
concatenated in order, with each field line value separated by a comma.

For example, this section:

Example-Field: Foo, Bar

Example-Field: Baz

contains two field lines, both with the field name "Example-Field". The
first field line has a field line value of "Foo, Bar", while the second field
line value is "Baz". The field value for "Example-Field" is the list "Foo, Bar,
Baz".

5.3. Field Order

A recipient MAY combine multiple field lines within a field section that
have the same field name into one field line, without changing the
semantics of the message, by appending each subsequent field line
value to the initial field line value in order, separated by a comma (",")
and optional whitespace (OWS, defined in Section 5.6.3). For consistency,
use comma SP.

The order in which field lines with the same name are received is
therefore significant to the interpretation of the field value; a proxy
MUST NOT change the order of these field line values when forwarding a
message.
This means that, aside from the well-known exception noted below, a
sender MUST NOT generate multiple field lines with the same name in a
message (whether in the headers or trailers) or append a field line when
a field line of the same name already exists in the message, unless that
field's definition allows multiple field line values to be recombined as a
comma-separated list (i.e., at least one alternative of the field's definition
allows a comma-separated list, such as an ABNF rule of #(values) defined
in Section 5.6.1).

Note: In practice, the "Set-Cookie" header field ([COOKIE]) often appears

in a response message across multiple field lines and does not use the
list syntax, violating the above requirements on multiple field lines with
the same field name. Since it cannot be combined into a single field
value, recipients ought to handle "Set-Cookie" as a special case while
processing fields. (See Appendix A.2.3 of [Kri2001] for details.)

The order in which field lines with differing field names are received in a
section is not significant. However, it is good practice to send header
fields that contain additional control data first, such as Host on requests
and Date on responses, so that implementations can decide when not to
handle a message as early as possible.

A server MUST NOT apply a request to the target resource until it

receives the entire request header section, since later header field lines
might include conditionals, authentication credentials, or deliberately
misleading duplicate header fields that could impact request processing.

5.4. Field Limits

HTTP does not place a predefined limit on the length of each field line,
field value, or on the length of a header or trailer section as a whole, as
described in Section 2. Various ad hoc limitations on individual lengths
are found in practice, often depending on the specific field's semantics.

A server that receives a request header field line, field value, or set of
fields larger than it wishes to process MUST respond with an appropriate
4xx (Client Error) status code. Ignoring such header fields would increase
the server's vulnerability to request smuggling attacks (Section 11.2 of
[HTTP/1.1]).

A client MAY discard or truncate received field lines that are larger than
the client wishes to process if the field semantics are such that the
dropped value(s) can be safely ignored without changing the message
framing or response semantics.

5.5. Field Values

HTTP field values consist of a sequence of characters in a format defined
by the field's grammar. Each field's grammar is usually defined using
ABNF ([RFC5234]).

field-value = *field-content
field-content = field-vchar
[ 1*( SP / HTAB / field-vchar ) field-vchar ]
field-vchar = VCHAR / obs-text
obs-text = %x80-FF

A field value does not include leading or trailing whitespace. When a

specific version of HTTP allows such whitespace to appear in a message,
a field parsing implementation MUST exclude such whitespace prior to
evaluating the field value.

Field values are usually constrained to the range of US-ASCII characters

[USASCII]. Fields needing a greater range of characters can use an
encoding, such as the one defined in [RFC8187]. Historically, HTTP
allowed field content with text in the ISO-8859-1 charset [ISO-8859-1],
supporting other charsets only through use of [RFC2047] encoding.
Specifications for newly defined fields SHOULD limit their values to
visible US-ASCII octets (VCHAR), SP, and HTAB. A recipient SHOULD treat
other allowed octets in field content (i.e., obs-text) as opaque data.

Field values containing CR, LF, or NUL characters are invalid and
dangerous, due to the varying ways that implementations might parse
and interpret those characters; a recipient of CR, LF, or NUL within a field
value MUST either reject the message or replace each of those characters
with SP before further processing or forwarding of that message. Field
values containing other CTL characters are also invalid; however,
recipients MAY retain such characters for the sake of robustness when
they appear within a safe context (e.g., an application-specific quoted
string that will not be processed by any downstream HTTP parser).

Fields that only anticipate a single member as the field value are referred
to as singleton fields.

Fields that allow multiple members as the field value are referred to as
list-based fields. The list operator extension of Section 5.6.1 is used as a
common notation for defining field values that can contain multiple
members.

Because commas (",") are used as the delimiter between members, they
need to be treated with care if they are allowed as data within a member.
This is true for both list-based and singleton fields, since a singleton field
might be erroneously sent with multiple members and detecting such
errors improves interoperability. Fields that expect to contain a comma
within a member, such as within an HTTP-date or URI-reference element,
ought to be defined with delimiters around that element to distinguish
any comma within that data from potential list separators.

For example, a textual date and a URI (either of which might contain a
comma) could be safely carried in list-based field values like these:

Example-URIs: "http://example.com/a.html,foo",
"http://without-a-comma.example.com/"
Example-Dates: "Sat, 04 May 1996", "Wed, 14 Sep 2005"

Note that double-quote delimiters are almost always used with the
quoted-string production (Section 5.6.4); using a different syntax inside
double-quotes will likely cause unnecessary confusion.

Many fields (such as Content-Type, defined in Section 8.3) use a common

syntax for parameters that allows both unquoted (token) and quoted
(quoted-string) syntax for a parameter value (Section 5.6.6). Use of
common syntax allows recipients to reuse existing parser components.
When allowing both forms, the meaning of a parameter value ought to
be the same whether it was received as a token or a quoted string.

Note: For defining field value syntax, this specification uses an ABNF rule
named after the field name to define the allowed grammar for that
field's value (after said value has been extracted from the underlying
messaging syntax and multiple instances combined into a list).

5.6. Common Rules for Defining Field Values

5.6.1. Lists (#rule ABNF Extension)
A #rule extension to the ABNF rules of [RFC5234] is used to improve
readability in the definitions of some list-based field values.
A construct "#" is defined, similar to "*", for defining comma-delimited
lists of elements. The full form is "<n>#<m>element" indicating at least
<n> and at most <m> elements, each separated by a single comma (",")
and optional whitespace (OWS, defined in Section 5.6.3).

5.6.1.1. Sender Requirements

In any production that uses the list construct, a sender MUST NOT
generate empty list elements. In other words, a sender has to generate
lists that satisfy the following syntax:

1#element => element *( OWS "," OWS element )

and:

#element => [ 1#element ]

and for n >= 1 and m > 1:

<n>#<m>element => element <n-1>*<m-1>( OWS "," OWS element )

Appendix A shows the collected ABNF for senders after the list
constructs have been expanded.

5.6.1.2. Recipient Requirements

Empty elements do not contribute to the count of elements present. A
recipient MUST parse and ignore a reasonable number of empty list
elements: enough to handle common mistakes by senders that merge
values, but not so much that they could be used as a denial-of-service
mechanism. In other words, a recipient MUST accept lists that satisfy the
following syntax:

#element => [ element ] *( OWS "," OWS [ element ] )

Note that because of the potential presence of empty list elements, the
RFC 5234 ABNF cannot enforce the cardinality of list elements, and
consequently all cases are mapped as if there was no cardinality
specified.

For example, given these ABNF productions:

example-list = 1#example-list-elmt
example-list-elmt = token ; see Section 5.6.2

Then the following are valid values for example-list (not including the
double quotes, which are present for delimitation only):

"foo,bar"
"foo ,bar,"
"foo , ,bar,charlie"

In contrast, the following values would be invalid, since at least one non-
empty element is required by the example-list production:

""
","
", ,"

5.6.2. Tokens
Tokens are short textual identifiers that do not include whitespace or
delimiters.

token = 1*tchar

tchar = "!" / "#" / "$" / "%" / "&" / "'" / "*"

/ "+" / "-" / "." / "^" / "_" / "`" / "|" / "~"
/ DIGIT / ALPHA
; any VCHAR, except delimiters

Many HTTP field values are defined using common syntax components,
separated by whitespace or specific delimiting characters. Delimiters are
chosen from the set of US-ASCII visual characters not allowed in a token
(DQUOTE and "(),/:;<=>?@[\]{}").

5.6.3. Whitespace
This specification uses three rules to denote the use of linear whitespace:
OWS (optional whitespace), RWS (required whitespace), and BWS ("bad"
whitespace).

The OWS rule is used where zero or more linear whitespace octets might
appear. For protocol elements where optional whitespace is preferred to
improve readability, a sender SHOULD generate the optional whitespace
as a single SP; otherwise, a sender SHOULD NOT generate optional
whitespace except as needed to overwrite invalid or unwanted protocol
elements during in-place message filtering.

The RWS rule is used when at least one linear whitespace octet is
required to separate field tokens. A sender SHOULD generate RWS as a
single SP.

OWS and RWS have the same semantics as a single SP. Any content
known to be defined as OWS or RWS MAY be replaced with a single SP
before interpreting it or forwarding the message downstream.

The BWS rule is used where the grammar allows optional whitespace
only for historical reasons. A sender MUST NOT generate BWS in
messages. A recipient MUST parse for such bad whitespace and remove
it before interpreting the protocol element.

BWS has no semantics. Any content known to be defined as BWS MAY be

removed before interpreting it or forwarding the message downstream.

OWS = *( SP / HTAB )
; optional whitespace
RWS = 1*( SP / HTAB )
; required whitespace
BWS = OWS
; "bad" whitespace

5.6.4. Quoted Strings

A string of text is parsed as a single value if it is quoted using double-
quote marks.

quoted-string = DQUOTE *( qdtext / quoted-pair ) DQUOTE

qdtext = HTAB / SP / %x21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-7E / obs-text

The backslash octet ("\") can be used as a single-octet quoting

mechanism within quoted-string and comment constructs. Recipients
that process the value of a quoted-string MUST handle a quoted-pair as
if it were replaced by the octet following the backslash.

quoted-pair = "\" ( HTAB / SP / VCHAR / obs-text )

A sender SHOULD NOT generate a quoted-pair in a quoted-string except

where necessary to quote DQUOTE and backslash octets occurring within
that string. A sender SHOULD NOT generate a quoted-pair in a comment
except where necessary to quote parentheses ["(" and ")"] and backslash
octets occurring within that comment.

5.6.5. Comments
Comments can be included in some HTTP fields by surrounding the
comment text with parentheses. Comments are only allowed in fields
containing "comment" as part of their field value definition.

comment = "(" *( ctext / quoted-pair / comment ) ")"

ctext = HTAB / SP / %x21-27 / %x2A-5B / %x5D-7E / obs-text

5.6.6. Parameters
Parameters are instances of name/value pairs; they are often used in field
values as a common syntax for appending auxiliary information to an
item. Each parameter is usually delimited by an immediately preceding
semicolon.

parameters = *( OWS ";" OWS [ parameter ] )

parameter = parameter-name "=" parameter-value
parameter-name = token
parameter-value = ( token / quoted-string )

Parameter names are case-insensitive. Parameter values might or might

not be case-sensitive, depending on the semantics of the parameter
name. Examples of parameters and some equivalent forms can be seen
in media types (Section 8.3.1) and the Accept header field (Section
12.5.1).

A parameter value that matches the token production can be transmitted

either as a token or within a quoted-string. The quoted and unquoted
values are equivalent.

Note: Parameters do not allow whitespace (not even "bad" whitespace)

around the "=" character.

5.6.7. Date/Time Formats

Prior to 1995, there were three different formats commonly used by
servers to communicate timestamps. For compatibility with old
implementations, all three are defined here. The preferred format is a
fixed-length and single-zone subset of the date and time specification
used by the Internet Message Format [RFC5322].

HTTP-date = IMF-fixdate / obs-date

An example of the preferred format is

Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT ; IMF-fixdate

Examples of the two obsolete formats are

Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT ; obsolete RFC 850 format

Sun Nov 6 08:49:37 1994 ; ANSI C's asctime() format

A recipient that parses a timestamp value in an HTTP field MUST accept

all three HTTP-date formats. When a sender generates a field that
contains one or more timestamps defined as HTTP-date, the sender
MUST generate those timestamps in the IMF-fixdate format.

An HTTP-date value represents time as an instance of Coordinated

Universal Time (UTC). The first two formats indicate UTC by the three-
letter abbreviation for Greenwich Mean Time, "GMT", a predecessor of
the UTC name; values in the asctime format are assumed to be in UTC.

A clock is an implementation capable of providing a reasonable

approximation of the current instant in UTC. A clock implementation
ought to use NTP ([RFC5905]), or some similar protocol, to synchronize
with UTC.

Preferred format:

IMF-fixdate = day-name "," SP date1 SP time-of-day SP GMT

; fixed length/zone/capitalization subset of the format
; see Section 3.3 of [RFC5322]

day-name = %s"Mon" / %s"Tue" / %s"Wed"

/ %s"Thu" / %s"Fri" / %s"Sat" / %s"Sun"

date1 = day SP month SP year

; e.g., 02 Jun 1982

day = 2DIGIT
month = %s"Jan" / %s"Feb" / %s"Mar" / %s"Apr"
/ %s"May" / %s"Jun" / %s"Jul" / %s"Aug"
/ %s"Sep" / %s"Oct" / %s"Nov" / %s"Dec"
year = 4DIGIT

GMT = %s"GMT"

time-of-day = hour ":" minute ":" second

; 00:00:00 - 23:59:60 (leap second)
 hour = 2DIGIT
minute = 2DIGIT
second = 2DIGIT

Obsolete formats:

obs-date = rfc850-date / asctime-date

rfc850-date = day-name-l "," SP date2 SP time-of-day SP GMT

date2 = day "-" month "-" 2DIGIT
; e.g., 02-Jun-82

day-name-l = %s"Monday" / %s"Tuesday" / %s"Wednesday"

/ %s"Thursday" / %s"Friday" / %s"Saturday"
/ %s"Sunday"

asctime-date = day-name SP date3 SP time-of-day SP year

date3 = month SP ( 2DIGIT / ( SP 1DIGIT ))
; e.g., Jun 2

HTTP-date is case sensitive. Note that Section 4.2 of [CACHING] relaxes

this for cache recipients.

A sender MUST NOT generate additional whitespace in an HTTP-date

beyond that specifically included as SP in the grammar. The semantics of
day-name, day, month, year, and time-of-day are the same as those
defined for the Internet Message Format constructs with the
corresponding name ([RFC5322], Section 3.3).

Recipients of a timestamp value in rfc850-date format, which uses a two-

digit year, MUST interpret a timestamp that appears to be more than 50
years in the future as representing the most recent year in the past that
had the same last two digits.

Recipients of timestamp values are encouraged to be robust in parsing

timestamps unless otherwise restricted by the field definition. For
example, messages are occasionally forwarded over HTTP from a non-
HTTP source that might generate any of the date and time specifications
defined by the Internet Message Format.

Note: HTTP requirements for timestamp formats apply only to their

usage within the protocol stream. Implementations are not required to
use these formats for user presentation, request logging, etc.
6. Message Abstraction
Each major version of HTTP defines its own syntax for communicating
messages. This section defines an abstract data type for HTTP messages
based on a generalization of those message characteristics, common
structure, and capacity for conveying semantics. This abstraction is used
to define requirements on senders and recipients that are independent
of the HTTP version, such that a message in one version can be relayed
through other versions without changing its meaning.

A message consists of the following:

• control data to describe and route the message,

• a headers lookup table of name/value pairs for extending that
control data and conveying additional information about the sender,
message, content, or context,
• a potentially unbounded stream of content, and
• a trailers lookup table of name/value pairs for communicating
information obtained while sending the content.

Framing and control data is sent first, followed by a header section

containing fields for the headers table. When a message includes
content, the content is sent after the header section, potentially followed
by a trailer section that might contain fields for the trailers table.

Messages are expected to be processed as a stream, wherein the

purpose of that stream and its continued processing is revealed while
being read. Hence, control data describes what the recipient needs to
know immediately, header fields describe what needs to be known
before receiving content, the content (when present) presumably
contains what the recipient wants or needs to fulfill the message
semantics, and trailer fields provide optional metadata that was unknown
prior to sending the content.

Messages are intended to be self-descriptive: everything a recipient

needs to know about the message can be determined by looking at the
message itself, after decoding or reconstituting parts that have been
compressed or elided in transit, without requiring an understanding of
the sender's current application state (established via prior messages).
However, a client MUST retain knowledge of the request when parsing,
interpreting, or caching a corresponding response. For example,
responses to the HEAD method look just like the beginning of a
response to GET but cannot be parsed in the same manner.

Note that this message abstraction is a generalization across many

versions of HTTP, including features that might not be found in some
versions. For example, trailers were introduced within the HTTP/1.1
chunked transfer coding as a trailer section after the content. An
equivalent feature is present in HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 within the header
block that terminates each stream.

6.1. Framing and Completeness

Message framing indicates how each message begins and ends, such
that each message can be distinguished from other messages or noise
on the same connection. Each major version of HTTP defines its own
framing mechanism.

HTTP/0.9 and early deployments of HTTP/1.0 used closure of the

underlying connection to end a response. For backwards compatibility,
this implicit framing is also allowed in HTTP/1.1. However, implicit
framing can fail to distinguish an incomplete response if the connection
closes early. For that reason, almost all modern implementations use
explicit framing in the form of length-delimited sequences of message
data.

A message is considered complete when all of the octets indicated by its

framing are available. Note that, when no explicit framing is used, a
response message that is ended by the underlying connection's close is
considered complete even though it might be indistinguishable from an
incomplete response, unless a transport-level error indicates that it is not
complete.

6.2. Control Data

Messages start with control data that describe its primary purpose.
Request message control data includes a request method (Section 9),
request target (Section 7.1), and protocol version (Section 2.5). Response
message control data includes a status code (Section 15), optional
reason phrase, and protocol version.

In HTTP/1.1 ([HTTP/1.1]) and earlier, control data is sent as the first line
of a message. In HTTP/2 ([HTTP/2]) and HTTP/3 ([HTTP/3]), control data
is sent as pseudo-header fields with a reserved name prefix (e.g.,
":authority").

Every HTTP message has a protocol version. Depending on the version in

use, it might be identified within the message explicitly or inferred by the
connection over which the message is received. Recipients use that
version information to determine limitations or potential for later
communication with that sender.

When a message is forwarded by an intermediary, the protocol version is

updated to reflect the version used by that intermediary. The Via header
field (Section 7.6.3) is used to communicate upstream protocol
information within a forwarded message.

A client SHOULD send a request version equal to the highest version to

which the client is conformant and whose major version is no higher
than the highest version supported by the server, if this is known. A
client MUST NOT send a version to which it is not conformant.

A client MAY send a lower request version if it is known that the server
incorrectly implements the HTTP specification, but only after the client
has attempted at least one normal request and determined from the
response status code or header fields (e.g., Server) that the server
improperly handles higher request versions.

A server SHOULD send a response version equal to the highest version

to which the server is conformant that has a major version less than or
equal to the one received in the request. A server MUST NOT send a
version to which it is not conformant. A server can send a 505 (HTTP
Version Not Supported) response if it wishes, for any reason, to refuse
service of the client's major protocol version.

A recipient that receives a message with a major version number that it

implements and a minor version number higher than what it implements
SHOULD process the message as if it were in the highest minor version
within that major version to which the recipient is conformant. A
recipient can assume that a message with a higher minor version, when
sent to a recipient that has not yet indicated support for that higher
version, is sufficiently backwards-compatible to be safely processed by
any implementation of the same major version.

6.3. Header Fields

Fields (Section 5) that are sent or received before the content are
referred to as "header fields" (or just "headers", colloquially).

The header section of a message consists of a sequence of header field

lines. Each header field might modify or extend message semantics,
describe the sender, define the content, or provide additional context.

Note: We refer to named fields specifically as a "header field" when they

are only allowed to be sent in the header section.

6.4. Content
HTTP messages often transfer a complete or partial representation as the
message content: a stream of octets sent after the header section, as
delineated by the message framing.

This abstract definition of content reflects the data after it has been
extracted from the message framing. For example, an HTTP/1.1 message
body (Section 6 of [HTTP/1.1]) might consist of a stream of data encoded
with the chunked transfer coding — a sequence of data chunks, one
zero-length chunk, and a trailer section — whereas the content of that
same message includes only the data stream after the transfer coding
has been decoded; it does not include the chunk lengths, chunked
framing syntax, nor the trailer fields (Section 6.5).

Note: Some field names have a "Content-" prefix. This is an informal

convention; while some of these fields refer to the content of the
message, as defined above, others are scoped to the selected
representation (Section 3.2). See the individual field's definition to
disambiguate.

6.4.1. Content Semantics

The purpose of content in a request is defined by the method semantics
(Section 9).

For example, a representation in the content of a PUT request (Section

9.3.4) represents the desired state of the target resource after the
request is successfully applied, whereas a representation in the content
of a POST request (Section 9.3.3) represents information to be processed
by the target resource.

In a response, the content's purpose is defined by the request method,

response status code (Section 15), and response fields describing that
content. For example, the content of a 200 (OK) response to GET (Section
9.3.1) represents the current state of the target resource, as observed at
the time of the message origination date (Section 6.6.1), whereas the
content of the same status code in a response to POST might represent
either the processing result or the new state of the target resource after
applying the processing.

The content of a 206 (Partial Content) response to GET contains either a

single part of the selected representation or a multipart message body
containing multiple parts of that representation, as described in Section
15.3.7.

Response messages with an error status code usually contain content

that represents the error condition, such that the content describes the
error state and what steps are suggested for resolving it.

Responses to the HEAD request method (Section 9.3.2) never include

content; the associated response header fields indicate only what their
values would have been if the request method had been GET (Section
9.3.1).

2xx (Successful) responses to a CONNECT request method (Section 9.3.6)

switch the connection to tunnel mode instead of having content.

All 1xx (Informational), 204 (No Content), and 304 (Not Modified)
responses do not include content.

All other responses do include content, although that content might be

of zero length.

6.4.2. Identifying Content

When a complete or partial representation is transferred as message
content, it is often desirable for the sender to supply, or the recipient to
determine, an identifier for a resource corresponding to that specific
representation. For example, a client making a GET request on a resource
for "the current weather report" might want an identifier specific to the
content returned (e.g., "weather report for Laguna Beach at
20210720T1711"). This can be useful for sharing or bookmarking content
from resources that are expected to have changing representations over
time.
For a request message:

• If the request has a Content-Location header field, then the sender

asserts that the content is a representation of the resource identified
by the Content-Location field value. However, such an assertion
cannot be trusted unless it can be verified by other means (not
defined by this specification). The information might still be useful
for revision history links.
• Otherwise, the content is unidentified by HTTP, but a more specific
identifier might be supplied within the content itself.

For a response message, the following rules are applied in order until a
match is found:

1. If the request method is HEAD or the response status code is 204

(No Content) or 304 (Not Modified), there is no content in the
response.
2. If the request method is GET and the response status code is 200
(OK), the content is a representation of the target resource (Section
7.1).
3. If the request method is GET and the response status code is 203
(Non-Authoritative Information), the content is a potentially
modified or enhanced representation of the target resource as
provided by an intermediary.
4. If the request method is GET and the response status code is 206
(Partial Content), the content is one or more parts of a
representation of the target resource.
5. If the response has a Content-Location header field and its field
value is a reference to the same URI as the target URI, the content is
a representation of the target resource.
6. If the response has a Content-Location header field and its field
value is a reference to a URI different from the target URI, then the
sender asserts that the content is a representation of the resource
identified by the Content-Location field value. However, such an
assertion cannot be trusted unless it can be verified by other means
(not defined by this specification).
7. Otherwise, the content is unidentified by HTTP, but a more specific
identifier might be supplied within the content itself.

6.5. Trailer Fields

Fields (Section 5) that are located within a trailer section are referred to
as "trailer fields" (or just "trailers", colloquially). Trailer fields can be useful
for supplying message integrity checks, digital signatures, delivery
metrics, or post-processing status information.

Trailer fields ought to be processed and stored separately from the fields
in the header section to avoid contradicting message semantics known
at the time the header section was complete. The presence or absence of
certain header fields might impact choices made for the routing or
processing of the message as a whole before the trailers are received;
those choices cannot be unmade by the later discovery of trailer fields.

6.5.1. Limitations on Use of Trailers

A trailer section is only possible when supported by the version of HTTP
in use and enabled by an explicit framing mechanism. For example, the
chunked transfer coding in HTTP/1.1 allows a trailer section to be sent
after the content (Section 7.1.2 of [HTTP/1.1]).

Many fields cannot be processed outside the header section because

their evaluation is necessary prior to receiving the content, such as those
that describe message framing, routing, authentication, request
modifiers, response controls, or content format. A sender MUST NOT
generate a trailer field unless the sender knows the corresponding
header field name's definition permits the field to be sent in trailers.

Trailer fields can be difficult to process by intermediaries that forward

messages from one protocol version to another. If the entire message
can be buffered in transit, some intermediaries could merge trailer fields
into the header section (as appropriate) before it is forwarded. However,
in most cases, the trailers are simply discarded. A recipient MUST NOT
merge a trailer field into a header section unless the recipient
understands the corresponding header field definition and that
definition explicitly permits and defines how trailer field values can be
safely merged.

The presence of the keyword "trailers" in the TE header field (Section

10.1.4) of a request indicates that the client is willing to accept trailer
fields, on behalf of itself and any downstream clients. For requests from
an intermediary, this implies that all downstream clients are willing to
accept trailer fields in the forwarded response. Note that the presence of
"trailers" does not mean that the client(s) will process any particular
trailer field in the response; only that the trailer section(s) will not be
dropped by any of the clients.

Because of the potential for trailer fields to be discarded in transit, a

server SHOULD NOT generate trailer fields that it believes are necessary
for the user agent to receive.

6.5.2. Processing Trailer Fields

The "Trailer" header field (Section 6.6.2) can be sent to indicate fields
likely to be sent in the trailer section, which allows recipients to prepare
for their receipt before processing the content. For example, this could
be useful if a field name indicates that a dynamic checksum should be
calculated as the content is received and then immediately checked
upon receipt of the trailer field value.

Like header fields, trailer fields with the same name are processed in the
order received; multiple trailer field lines with the same name have the
equivalent semantics as appending the multiple values as a list of
members. Trailer fields that might be generated more than once during a
message MUST be defined as a list-based field even if each member
value is only processed once per field line received.

At the end of a message, a recipient MAY treat the set of received trailer
fields as a data structure of name/value pairs, similar to (but separate
from) the header fields. Additional processing expectations, if any, can be
defined within the field specification for a field intended for use in
trailers.

6.6. Message Metadata

Fields that describe the message itself, such as when and how the
message has been generated, can appear in both requests and
responses.

6.6.1. Date
The "Date" header field represents the date and time at which the
message was originated, having the same semantics as the Origination
Date Field (orig-date) defined in Section 3.6.1 of [RFC5322]. The field
value is an HTTP-date, as defined in Section 5.6.7.

Date = HTTP-date
An example is

Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 08:12:31 GMT

A sender that generates a Date header field SHOULD generate its field
value as the best available approximation of the date and time of
message generation. In theory, the date ought to represent the moment
just before generating the message content. In practice, a sender can
generate the date value at any time during message origination.

An origin server with a clock (as defined in Section 5.6.7) MUST generate
a Date header field in all 2xx (Successful), 3xx (Redirection), and 4xx
(Client Error) responses, and MAY generate a Date header field in 1xx
(Informational) and 5xx (Server Error) responses.

An origin server without a clock MUST NOT generate a Date header field.

A recipient with a clock that receives a response message without a Date

header field MUST record the time it was received and append a
corresponding Date header field to the message's header section if it is
cached or forwarded downstream.

A recipient with a clock that receives a response with an invalid Date

header field value MAY replace that value with the time that response
was received.

A user agent MAY send a Date header field in a request, though

generally will not do so unless it is believed to convey useful information
to the server. For example, custom applications of HTTP might convey a
Date if the server is expected to adjust its interpretation of the user's
request based on differences between the user agent and server clocks.

6.6.2. Trailer
The "Trailer" header field provides a list of field names that the sender
anticipates sending as trailer fields within that message. This allows a
recipient to prepare for receipt of the indicated metadata before it starts
processing the content.

Trailer = #field-name

For example, a sender might indicate that a signature will be computed

as the content is being streamed and provide the final signature as a
trailer field. This allows a recipient to perform the same check on the fly
as it receives the content.

A sender that intends to generate one or more trailer fields in a message

SHOULD generate a Trailer header field in the header section of that
message to indicate which fields might be present in the trailers.

If an intermediary discards the trailer section in transit, the Trailer field

could provide a hint of what metadata was lost, though there is no
guarantee that a sender of Trailer will always follow through by sending
the named fields.

7. Routing HTTP Messages

HTTP request message routing is determined by each client based on the
target resource, the client's proxy configuration, and establishment or
reuse of an inbound connection. The corresponding response routing
follows the same connection chain back to the client.

7.1. Determining the Target Resource

Although HTTP is used in a wide variety of applications, most clients rely
on the same resource identification mechanism and configuration
techniques as general-purpose Web browsers. Even when
communication options are hard-coded in a client's configuration, we
can think of their combined effect as a URI reference (Section 4.1).

A URI reference is resolved to its absolute form in order to obtain the

target URI. The target URI excludes the reference's fragment component,
if any, since fragment identifiers are reserved for client-side processing
([URI], Section 3.5).

To perform an action on a target resource, the client sends a request

message containing enough components of its parsed target URI to
enable recipients to identify that same resource. For historical reasons,
the parsed target URI components, collectively referred to as the request
target, are sent within the message control data and the Host header
field (Section 7.2).

There are two unusual cases for which the request target components
are in a method-specific form:

• For CONNECT (Section 9.3.6), the request target is the host name
 and port number of the tunnel destination, separated by a colon.
• For OPTIONS (Section 9.3.7), the request target can be a single
asterisk ("*").

See the respective method definitions for details. These forms MUST NOT
be used with other methods.

Upon receipt of a client's request, a server reconstructs the target URI

from the received components in accordance with their local
configuration and incoming connection context. This reconstruction is
specific to each major protocol version. For example, Section 3.3 of
[HTTP/1.1] defines how a server determines the target URI of an
HTTP/1.1 request.

Note: Previous specifications defined the recomposed target URI as a

distinct concept, the effective request URI.

7.2. Host and :authority

The "Host" header field in a request provides the host and port
information from the target URI, enabling the origin server to distinguish
among resources while servicing requests for multiple host names.

In HTTP/2 [HTTP/2] and HTTP/3 [HTTP/3], the Host header field is, in
some cases, supplanted by the ":authority" pseudo-header field of a
request's control data.

Host = uri-host [ ":" port ] ; Section 4

The target URI's authority information is critical for handling a request. A

user agent MUST generate a Host header field in a request unless it
sends that information as an ":authority" pseudo-header field. A user
agent that sends Host SHOULD send it as the first field in the header
section of a request.

For example, a GET request to the origin server for <http://

www.example.org/pub/WWW/> would begin with:

GET /pub/WWW/ HTTP/1.1

Host: www.example.org

Since the host and port information acts as an application-level routing

mechanism, it is a frequent target for malware seeking to poison a
shared cache or redirect a request to an unintended server. An
interception proxy is particularly vulnerable if it relies on the host and
port information for redirecting requests to internal servers, or for use as
a cache key in a shared cache, without first verifying that the intercepted
connection is targeting a valid IP address for that host.

7.3. Routing Inbound Requests

Once the target URI and its origin are determined, a client decides
whether a network request is necessary to accomplish the desired
semantics and, if so, where that request is to be directed.

7.3.1. To a Cache
If the client has a cache [CACHING] and the request can be satisfied by it,
then the request is usually directed there first.

7.3.2. To a Proxy
If the request is not satisfied by a cache, then a typical client will check its
configuration to determine whether a proxy is to be used to satisfy the
request. Proxy configuration is implementation-dependent, but is often
based on URI prefix matching, selective authority matching, or both, and
the proxy itself is usually identified by an "http" or "https" URI.

If an "http" or "https" proxy is applicable, the client connects inbound by

establishing (or reusing) a connection to that proxy and then sending it
an HTTP request message containing a request target that matches the
client's target URI.

7.3.3. To the Origin

If no proxy is applicable, a typical client will invoke a handler routine
(specific to the target URI's scheme) to obtain access to the identified
resource. How that is accomplished is dependent on the target URI
scheme and defined by its associated specification.

Section 4.3.2 defines how to obtain access to an "http" resource by

establishing (or reusing) an inbound connection to the identified origin
server and then sending it an HTTP request message containing a
request target that matches the client's target URI.

Section 4.3.3 defines how to obtain access to an "https" resource by

establishing (or reusing) an inbound secured connection to an origin
server that is authoritative for the identified origin and then sending it an
HTTP request message containing a request target that matches the
client's target URI.

7.4. Rejecting Misdirected Requests

Once a request is received by a server and parsed sufficiently to
determine its target URI, the server decides whether to process the
request itself, forward the request to another server, redirect the client to
a different resource, respond with an error, or drop the connection. This
decision can be influenced by anything about the request or connection
context, but is specifically directed at whether the server has been
configured to process requests for that target URI and whether the
connection context is appropriate for that request.

For example, a request might have been misdirected, deliberately or

accidentally, such that the information within a received Host header
field differs from the connection's host or port. If the connection is from
a trusted gateway, such inconsistency might be expected; otherwise, it
might indicate an attempt to bypass security filters, trick the server into
delivering non-public content, or poison a cache. See Section 17 for
security considerations regarding message routing.

Unless the connection is from a trusted gateway, an origin server MUST

reject a request if any scheme-specific requirements for the target URI
are not met. In particular, a request for an "https" resource MUST be
rejected unless it has been received over a connection that has been
secured via a certificate valid for that target URI's origin, as defined by
Section 4.2.2.

The 421 (Misdirected Request) status code in a response indicates that

the origin server has rejected the request because it appears to have
been misdirected (Section 15.5.20).

7.5. Response Correlation

A connection might be used for multiple request/response exchanges.
The mechanism used to correlate between request and response
messages is version dependent; some versions of HTTP use implicit
ordering of messages, while others use an explicit identifier.

All responses, regardless of the status code (including interim responses)

can be sent at any time after a request is received, even if the request is
not yet complete. A response can complete before its corresponding
request is complete (Section 6.1). Likewise, clients are not expected to
wait any specific amount of time for a response. Clients (including
intermediaries) might abandon a request if the response is not received
within a reasonable period of time.

A client that receives a response while it is still sending the associated

request SHOULD continue sending that request unless it receives an
explicit indication to the contrary (see, e.g., Section 9.5 of [HTTP/1.1] and
Section 6.4 of [HTTP/2]).

7.6. Message Forwarding

As described in Section 3.7, intermediaries can serve a variety of roles in
the processing of HTTP requests and responses. Some intermediaries are
used to improve performance or availability. Others are used for access
control or to filter content. Since an HTTP stream has characteristics
similar to a pipe-and-filter architecture, there are no inherent limits to
the extent an intermediary can enhance (or interfere) with either
direction of the stream.

Intermediaries are expected to forward messages even when protocol

elements are not recognized (e.g., new methods, status codes, or field
names) since that preserves extensibility for downstream recipients.

An intermediary not acting as a tunnel MUST implement the Connection

header field, as specified in Section 7.6.1, and exclude fields from being
forwarded that are only intended for the incoming connection.

An intermediary MUST NOT forward a message to itself unless it is

protected from an infinite request loop. In general, an intermediary
ought to recognize its own server names, including any aliases, local
variations, or literal IP addresses, and respond to such requests directly.

An HTTP message can be parsed as a stream for incremental processing

or forwarding downstream. However, senders and recipients cannot rely
on incremental delivery of partial messages, since some implementations
will buffer or delay message forwarding for the sake of network
efficiency, security checks, or content transformations.

7.6.1. Connection
The "Connection" header field allows the sender to list desired control
options for the current connection.

Connection = #connection-option
connection-option = token

Connection options are case-insensitive.

When a field aside from Connection is used to supply control

information for or about the current connection, the sender MUST list the
corresponding field name within the Connection header field. Note that
some versions of HTTP prohibit the use of fields for such information,
and therefore do not allow the Connection field.

Intermediaries MUST parse a received Connection header field before a

message is forwarded and, for each connection-option in this field,
remove any header or trailer field(s) from the message with the same
name as the connection-option, and then remove the Connection header
field itself (or replace it with the intermediary's own control options for
the forwarded message).

Hence, the Connection header field provides a declarative way of

distinguishing fields that are only intended for the immediate recipient
("hop-by-hop") from those fields that are intended for all recipients on
the chain ("end-to-end"), enabling the message to be self-descriptive
and allowing future connection-specific extensions to be deployed
without fear that they will be blindly forwarded by older intermediaries.

Furthermore, intermediaries SHOULD remove or replace fields that are

known to require removal before forwarding, whether or not they appear
as a connection-option, after applying those fields' semantics. This
includes but is not limited to:

• Proxy-Connection (Appendix C.2.2 of [HTTP/1.1])

• Keep-Alive (Section 19.7.1 of [RFC2068])
• TE (Section 10.1.4)
• Transfer-Encoding (Section 6.1 of [HTTP/1.1])
• Upgrade (Section 7.8)

A sender MUST NOT send a connection option corresponding to a field

that is intended for all recipients of the content. For example, Cache-
Control is never appropriate as a connection option (Section 5.2 of
[CACHING]).

Connection options do not always correspond to a field present in the

message, since a connection-specific field might not be needed if there
are no parameters associated with a connection option. In contrast, a
connection-specific field received without a corresponding connection
option usually indicates that the field has been improperly forwarded by
an intermediary and ought to be ignored by the recipient.

When defining a new connection option that does not correspond to a

field, specification authors ought to reserve the corresponding field
name anyway in order to avoid later collisions. Such reserved field names
are registered in the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name
Registry" (Section 16.3.1).

7.6.2. Max-Forwards
The "Max-Forwards" header field provides a mechanism with the TRACE
(Section 9.3.8) and OPTIONS (Section 9.3.7) request methods to limit the
number of times that the request is forwarded by proxies. This can be
useful when the client is attempting to trace a request that appears to be
failing or looping mid-chain.

Max-Forwards = 1*DIGIT

The Max-Forwards value is a decimal integer indicating the remaining

number of times this request message can be forwarded.

Each intermediary that receives a TRACE or OPTIONS request containing

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

A recipient MAY ignore a Max-Forwards header field received with any

other request methods.

7.6.3. Via
The "Via" header field indicates the presence of intermediate protocols
and recipients between the user agent and the server (on requests) or
between the origin server and the client (on responses), similar to the
"Received" header field in email (Section 3.6.7 of [RFC5322]). Via can be
used for tracking message forwards, avoiding request loops, and
identifying the protocol capabilities of senders along the request/
response chain.

Via = #( received-protocol RWS received-by [ RWS comment ] )

received-protocol = [ protocol-name "/" ] protocol-version

; see Section 7.8
received-by = pseudonym [ ":" port ]
pseudonym = token

Each member of the Via field value represents a proxy or gateway that
has forwarded the message. Each intermediary appends its own
information about how the message was received, such that the end
result is ordered according to the sequence of forwarding recipients.

A proxy MUST send an appropriate Via header field, as described below,

in each message that it forwards. An HTTP-to-HTTP gateway MUST send
an appropriate Via header field in each inbound request message and
MAY send a Via header field in forwarded response messages.

For each intermediary, the received-protocol indicates the protocol and

protocol version used by the upstream sender of the message. Hence,
the Via field value records the advertised protocol capabilities of the
request/response chain such that they remain visible to downstream
recipients; this can be useful for determining what backwards-
incompatible features might be safe to use in response, or within a later
request, as described in Section 2.5. For brevity, the protocol-name is
omitted when the received protocol is HTTP.

The received-by portion is normally the host and optional port number
of a recipient server or client that subsequently forwarded the message.
However, if the real host is considered to be sensitive information, a
sender MAY replace it with a pseudonym. If a port is not provided, a
recipient MAY interpret that as meaning it was received on the default
port, if any, for the received-protocol.

A sender MAY generate comments to identify the software of each

recipient, analogous to the User-Agent and Server header fields.
However, comments in Via are optional, and a recipient MAY remove
them prior to forwarding the message.

For example, a request message could be sent from an HTTP/1.0 user

agent to an internal proxy code-named "fred", which uses HTTP/1.1 to
forward the request to a public proxy at p.example.net, which completes
the request by forwarding it to the origin server at www.example.com.
The request received by www.example.com would then have the
following Via header field:

Via: 1.0 fred, 1.1 p.example.net

An intermediary used as a portal through a network firewall SHOULD

NOT forward the names and ports of hosts within the firewall region
unless it is explicitly enabled to do so. If not enabled, such an
intermediary SHOULD replace each received-by host of any host behind
the firewall by an appropriate pseudonym for that host.

An intermediary MAY combine an ordered subsequence of Via header

field list members into a single member if the entries have identical
received-protocol values. For example,

Via: 1.0 ricky, 1.1 ethel, 1.1 fred, 1.0 lucy

could be collapsed to

Via: 1.0 ricky, 1.1 mertz, 1.0 lucy

A sender SHOULD NOT combine multiple list members unless they are
all under the same organizational control and the hosts have already
been replaced by pseudonyms. A sender MUST NOT combine members
that have different received-protocol values.

7.7. Message Transformations

Some intermediaries include features for transforming messages and
their content. A proxy might, for example, convert between image
formats in order to save cache space or to reduce the amount of traffic
on a slow link. However, operational problems might occur when these
transformations are applied to content intended for critical applications,
such as medical imaging or scientific data analysis, particularly when
integrity checks or digital signatures are used to ensure that the content
received is identical to the original.

An HTTP-to-HTTP proxy is called a transforming proxy if it is designed or

configured to modify messages in a semantically meaningful way (i.e.,
modifications, beyond those required by normal HTTP processing, that
change the message in a way that would be significant to the original
sender or potentially significant to downstream recipients). For example,
a transforming proxy might be acting as a shared annotation server
(modifying responses to include references to a local annotation
database), a malware filter, a format transcoder, or a privacy filter. Such
transformations are presumed to be desired by whichever client (or
client organization) chose the proxy.

If a proxy receives a target URI with a host name that is not a fully
qualified domain name, it MAY add its own domain to the host name it
received when forwarding the request. A proxy MUST NOT change the
host name if the target URI contains a fully qualified domain name.

A proxy MUST NOT modify the "absolute-path" and "query" parts of the
received target URI when forwarding it to the next inbound server except
as required by that forwarding protocol. For example, a proxy forwarding
a request to an origin server via HTTP/1.1 will replace an empty path with
"/" (Section 3.2.1 of [HTTP/1.1]) or "*" (Section 3.2.4 of [HTTP/1.1]),
depending on the request method.

A proxy MUST NOT transform the content (Section 6.4) of a response

message that contains a no-transform cache directive (Section 5.2.2.6 of
[CACHING]). Note that this does not apply to message transformations
that do not change the content, such as the addition or removal of
transfer codings (Section 7 of [HTTP/1.1]).

A proxy MAY transform the content of a message that does not contain a
no-transform cache directive. A proxy that transforms the content of a
200 (OK) response can inform downstream recipients that a
transformation has been applied by changing the response status code
to 203 (Non-Authoritative Information) (Section 15.3.4).

A proxy SHOULD NOT modify header fields that provide information

about the endpoints of the communication chain, the resource state, or
the selected representation (other than the content) unless the field's
definition specifically allows such modification or the modification is
deemed necessary for privacy or security.
7.8. Upgrade
The "Upgrade" header field is intended to provide a simple mechanism
for transitioning from HTTP/1.1 to some other protocol on the same
connection.

A client MAY send a list of protocol names in the Upgrade header field of
a request to invite the server to switch to one or more of the named
protocols, in order of descending preference, before sending the final
response. A server MAY ignore a received Upgrade header field if it
wishes to continue using the current protocol on that connection.
Upgrade cannot be used to insist on a protocol change.

Upgrade = #protocol

protocol = protocol-name ["/" protocol-version]

protocol-name = token
protocol-version = token

Although protocol names are registered with a preferred case, recipients

SHOULD use case-insensitive comparison when matching each protocol-
name to supported protocols.

A server that sends a 101 (Switching Protocols) response MUST send an

Upgrade header field to indicate the new protocol(s) to which the
connection is being switched; if multiple protocol layers are being
switched, the sender MUST list the protocols in layer-ascending order. A
server MUST NOT switch to a protocol that was not indicated by the
client in the corresponding request's Upgrade header field. A server MAY
choose to ignore the order of preference indicated by the client and
select the new protocol(s) based on other factors, such as the nature of
the request or the current load on the server.

A server that sends a 426 (Upgrade Required) response MUST send an

Upgrade header field to indicate the acceptable protocols, in order of
descending preference.

A server MAY send an Upgrade header field in any other response to

advertise that it implements support for upgrading to the listed
protocols, in order of descending preference, when appropriate for a
future request.

The following is a hypothetical example sent by a client:

GET /hello HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Connection: upgrade
Upgrade: websocket, IRC/6.9, RTA/x11

The capabilities and nature of the application-level communication after

the protocol change is entirely dependent upon the new protocol(s)
chosen. However, immediately after sending the 101 (Switching
Protocols) response, the server is expected to continue responding to
the original request as if it had received its equivalent within the new
protocol (i.e., the server still has an outstanding request to satisfy after
the protocol has been changed, and is expected to do so without
requiring the request to be repeated).

For example, if the Upgrade header field is received in a GET request and
the server decides to switch protocols, it first responds with a 101
(Switching Protocols) message in HTTP/1.1 and then immediately follows
that with the new protocol's equivalent of a response to a GET on the
target resource. This allows a connection to be upgraded to protocols
with the same semantics as HTTP without the latency cost of an
additional round trip. A server MUST NOT switch protocols unless the
received message semantics can be honored by the new protocol; an
OPTIONS request can be honored by any protocol.

The following is an example response to the above hypothetical request:

HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols

Connection: upgrade
Upgrade: websocket

[... data stream switches to websocket with an appropriate response

(as defined by new protocol) to the "GET /hello" request ...]

A sender of Upgrade MUST also send an "Upgrade" connection option in

the Connection header field (Section 7.6.1) to inform intermediaries not
to forward this field. A server that receives an Upgrade header field in an
HTTP/1.0 request MUST ignore that Upgrade field.

A client cannot begin using an upgraded protocol on the connection

until it has completely sent the request message (i.e., the client can't
change the protocol it is sending in the middle of a message). If a server
receives both an Upgrade and an Expect header field with the "100-
continue" expectation (Section 10.1.1), the server MUST send a 100
(Continue) response before sending a 101 (Switching Protocols)
response.

The Upgrade header field only applies to switching protocols on top of

the existing connection; it cannot be used to switch the underlying
connection (transport) protocol, nor to switch the existing
communication to a different connection. For those purposes, it is more
appropriate to use a 3xx (Redirection) response (Section 15.4).

This specification only defines the protocol name "HTTP" for use by the
family of Hypertext Transfer Protocols, as defined by the HTTP version
rules of Section 2.5 and future updates to this specification. Additional
protocol names ought to be registered using the registration procedure
defined in Section 16.7.

8. Representation Data and Metadata

8.1. Representation Data
The representation data associated with an HTTP message is either
provided as the content of the message or referred to by the message
semantics and the target URI. The representation data is in a format and
encoding defined by the representation metadata header fields.

The data type of the representation data is determined via the header
fields Content-Type and Content-Encoding. These define a two-layer,
ordered encoding model:

representation-data := Content-Encoding( Content-Type( data ) )

8.2. Representation Metadata

Representation header fields provide metadata about the representation.
When a message includes content, the representation header fields
describe how to interpret that data. In a response to a HEAD request, the
representation header fields describe the representation data that would
have been enclosed in the content if the same request had been a GET.

8.3. Content-Type
The "Content-Type" header field indicates the media type of the
associated representation: either the representation enclosed in the
message content or the selected representation, as determined by the
message semantics. The indicated media type defines both the data
format and how that data is intended to be processed by a recipient,
within the scope of the received message semantics, after any content
codings indicated by Content-Encoding are decoded.

Content-Type = media-type

Media types are defined in Section 8.3.1. An example of the field is

Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-4

A sender that generates a message containing content SHOULD

generate a Content-Type header field in that message unless the
intended media type of the enclosed representation is unknown to the
sender. If a Content-Type header field is not present, the recipient MAY
either assume a media type of "application/octet-stream" ([RFC2046],
Section 4.5.1) or examine the data to determine its type.

In practice, resource owners do not always properly configure their

origin server to provide the correct Content-Type for a given
representation. Some user agents examine the content and, in certain
cases, override the received type (for example, see [Sniffing]). This "MIME
sniffing" risks drawing incorrect conclusions about the data, which might
expose the user to additional security risks (e.g., "privilege escalation").
Furthermore, distinct media types often share a common data format,
differing only in how the data is intended to be processed, which is
impossible to distinguish by inspecting the data alone. When sniffing is
implemented, implementers are encouraged to provide a means for the
user to disable it.

Although Content-Type is defined as a singleton field, it is sometimes

incorrectly generated multiple times, resulting in a combined field value
that appears to be a list. Recipients often attempt to handle this error by
using the last syntactically valid member of the list, leading to potential
interoperability and security issues if different implementations have
different error handling behaviors.

8.3.1. Media Type

HTTP uses media types [RFC2046] in the Content-Type (Section 8.3) and
Accept (Section 12.5.1) header fields in order to provide open and
extensible data typing and type negotiation. Media types define both a
data format and various processing models: how to process that data in
accordance with the message context.

media-type = type "/" subtype parameters

type = token
subtype = token

The type and subtype tokens are case-insensitive.

The type/subtype MAY be followed by semicolon-delimited parameters

(Section 5.6.6) in the form of name/value pairs. The presence or absence
of a parameter might be significant to the processing of a media type,
depending on its definition within the media type registry. Parameter
values might or might not be case-sensitive, depending on the semantics
of the parameter name.

For example, the following media types are equivalent in describing

HTML text data encoded in the UTF-8 character encoding scheme, but
the first is preferred for consistency (the "charset" parameter value is
defined as being case-insensitive in [RFC2046], Section 4.1.2):

text/html;charset=utf-8
Text/HTML;Charset="utf-8"
text/html; charset="utf-8"
text/html;charset=UTF-8

Media types ought to be registered with IANA according to the

procedures defined in [BCP13].

8.3.2. Charset
HTTP uses charset names to indicate or negotiate the character encoding
scheme ([RFC6365], Section 2) of a textual representation. In the fields
defined by this document, charset names appear either in parameters
(Content-Type), or, for Accept-Encoding, in the form of a plain token. In
both cases, charset names are matched case-insensitively.

Charset names ought to be registered in the IANA "Character Sets"

registry (https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets) according to
the procedures defined in Section 2 of [RFC2978].

Note: In theory, charset names are defined by the "mime-charset" ABNF

rule defined in Section 2.3 of [RFC2978] (as corrected in [Err1912]). That
rule allows two characters that are not included in "token" ("{" and "}"),
but no charset name registered at the time of this writing includes braces
(see [Err5433]).

8.3.3. Multipart Types

MIME provides for a number of "multipart" types — encapsulations of
one or more representations within a single message body. All multipart
types share a common syntax, as defined in Section 5.1.1 of [RFC2046],
and include a boundary parameter as part of the media type value. The
message body is itself a protocol element; a sender MUST generate only
CRLF to represent line breaks between body parts.

HTTP message framing does not use the multipart boundary as an

indicator of message body length, though it might be used by
implementations that generate or process the content. For example, the
"multipart/form-data" type is often used for carrying form data in a
request, as described in [RFC7578], and the "multipart/byteranges" type
is defined by this specification for use in some 206 (Partial Content)
responses (see Section 15.3.7).

8.4. Content-Encoding
The "Content-Encoding" header field indicates what content codings
have been applied to the representation, beyond those inherent in the
media type, and thus what decoding mechanisms have to be applied in
order to obtain data in the media type referenced by the Content-Type
header field. Content-Encoding is primarily used to allow a
representation's data to be compressed without losing the identity of its
underlying media type.

Content-Encoding = #content-coding

An example of its use is

Content-Encoding: gzip

If one or more encodings have been applied to a representation, the

sender that applied the encodings MUST generate a Content-Encoding
header field that lists the content codings in the order in which they were
applied. Note that the coding named "identity" is reserved for its special
role in Accept-Encoding and thus SHOULD NOT be included.
Additional information about the encoding parameters can be provided
by other header fields not defined by this specification.

Unlike Transfer-Encoding (Section 6.1 of [HTTP/1.1]), the codings listed in

Content-Encoding are a characteristic of the representation; the
representation is defined in terms of the coded form, and all other
metadata about the representation is about the coded form unless
otherwise noted in the metadata definition. Typically, the representation
is only decoded just prior to rendering or analogous usage.

If the media type includes an inherent encoding, such as a data format

that is always compressed, then that encoding would not be restated in
Content-Encoding even if it happens to be the same algorithm as one of
the content codings. Such a content coding would only be listed if, for
some bizarre reason, it is applied a second time to form the
representation. Likewise, an origin server might choose to publish the
same data as multiple representations that differ only in whether the
coding is defined as part of Content-Type or Content-Encoding, since
some user agents will behave differently in their handling of each
response (e.g., open a "Save as ..." dialog instead of automatic
decompression and rendering of content).

An origin server MAY respond with a status code of 415 (Unsupported

Media Type) if a representation in the request message has a content
coding that is not acceptable.

8.4.1. Content Codings

Content coding values indicate an encoding transformation that has
been or can be applied to a representation. Content codings are
primarily used to allow a representation to be compressed or otherwise
usefully transformed without losing the identity of its underlying media
type and without loss of information. Frequently, the representation is
stored in coded form, transmitted directly, and only decoded by the final
recipient.

content-coding = token

All content codings are case-insensitive and ought to be registered

within the "HTTP Content Coding Registry", as described in Section 16.6

Content-coding values are used in the Accept-Encoding (Section 12.5.3)

and Content-Encoding (Section 8.4) header fields.

8.4.1.1. Compress Coding

The "compress" coding is an adaptive Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) coding
[Welch] that is commonly produced by the UNIX file compression
program "compress". A recipient SHOULD consider "x-compress" to be
equivalent to "compress".

8.4.1.2. Deflate Coding

The "deflate" coding is a "zlib" data format [RFC1950] containing a
"deflate" compressed data stream [RFC1951] that uses a combination of
the Lempel-Ziv (LZ77) compression algorithm and Huffman coding.

Note: Some non-conformant implementations send the "deflate"

compressed data without the zlib wrapper.

8.4.1.3. Gzip Coding

The "gzip" coding is an LZ77 coding with a 32-bit Cyclic Redundancy
Check (CRC) that is commonly produced by the gzip file compression
program [RFC1952]. A recipient SHOULD consider "x-gzip" to be
equivalent to "gzip".

8.5. Content-Language
The "Content-Language" header field describes the natural language(s)
of the intended audience for the representation. Note that this might not
be equivalent to all the languages used within the representation.

Content-Language = #language-tag

Language tags are defined in Section 8.5.1. The primary purpose of

Content-Language is to allow a user to identify and differentiate
representations according to the users' own preferred language. Thus, if
the content is intended only for a Danish-literate audience, the
appropriate field is

Content-Language: da

If no Content-Language is specified, the default is that the content is

intended for all language audiences. This might mean that the sender
does not consider it to be specific to any natural language, or that the
sender does not know for which language it is intended.
Multiple languages MAY be listed for content that is intended for
multiple audiences. For example, a rendition of the "Treaty of Waitangi",
presented simultaneously in the original Maori and English versions,
would call for

Content-Language: mi, en

However, just because multiple languages are present within a

representation does not mean that it is intended for multiple linguistic
audiences. An example would be a beginner's language primer, such as
"A First Lesson in Latin", which is clearly intended to be used by an
English-literate audience. In this case, the Content-Language would
properly only include "en".

Content-Language MAY be applied to any media type — it is not limited

to textual documents.

8.5.1. Language Tags

A language tag, as defined in [RFC5646], identifies a natural language
spoken, written, or otherwise conveyed by human beings for
communication of information to other human beings. Computer
languages are explicitly excluded.

HTTP uses language tags within the Accept-Language and Content-

Language header fields. Accept-Language uses the broader language-
range production defined in Section 12.5.4, whereas Content-Language
uses the language-tag production defined below.

language-tag = <Language-Tag, see [RFC5646], Section 2.1>

A language tag is a sequence of one or more case-insensitive subtags,

each separated by a hyphen character ("-", %x2D). In most cases, a
language tag consists of a primary language subtag that identifies a
broad family of related languages (e.g., "en" = English), which is
optionally followed by a series of subtags that refine or narrow that
language's range (e.g., "en-CA" = the variety of English as communicated
in Canada). Whitespace is not allowed within a language tag. Example
tags include:

fr, en-US, es-419, az-Arab, x-pig-latin, man-Nkoo-GN

See [RFC5646] for further information.

8.6. Content-Length
The "Content-Length" header field indicates the associated
representation's data length as a decimal non-negative integer number
of octets. When transferring a representation as content, Content-Length
refers specifically to the amount of data enclosed so that it can be used
to delimit framing (e.g., Section 6.2 of [HTTP/1.1]). In other cases,
Content-Length indicates the selected representation's current length,
which can be used by recipients to estimate transfer time or to compare
with previously stored representations.

Content-Length = 1*DIGIT

An example is

Content-Length: 3495

A user agent SHOULD send Content-Length in a request when the

method defines a meaning for enclosed content and it is not sending
Transfer-Encoding. For example, a user agent normally sends Content-
Length in a POST request even when the value is 0 (indicating empty
content). A user agent SHOULD NOT send a Content-Length header field
when the request message does not contain content and the method
semantics do not anticipate such data.

A server MAY send a Content-Length header field in a response to a

HEAD request (Section 9.3.2); a server MUST NOT send Content-Length
in such a response unless its field value equals the decimal number of
octets that would have been sent in the content of a response if the
same request had used the GET method.

A server MAY send a Content-Length header field in a 304 (Not

Modified) response to a conditional GET request (Section 15.4.5); a server
MUST NOT send Content-Length in such a response unless its field value
equals the decimal number of octets that would have been sent in the
content of a 200 (OK) response to the same request.

A server MUST NOT send a Content-Length header field in any response

with a status code of 1xx (Informational) or 204 (No Content). A server
MUST NOT send a Content-Length header field in any 2xx (Successful)
response to a CONNECT request (Section 9.3.6).

Aside from the cases defined above, in the absence of Transfer-Encoding,

an origin server SHOULD send a Content-Length header field when the
content size is known prior to sending the complete header section. This
will allow downstream recipients to measure transfer progress, know
when a received message is complete, and potentially reuse the
connection for additional requests.

Any Content-Length field value greater than or equal to zero is valid.

Since there is no predefined limit to the length of content, a recipient
MUST anticipate potentially large decimal numerals and prevent parsing
errors due to integer conversion overflows or precision loss due to
integer conversion (Section 17.5).

Because Content-Length is used for message delimitation in HTTP/1.1, its

field value can impact how the message is parsed by downstream
recipients even when the immediate connection is not using HTTP/1.1. If
the message is forwarded by a downstream intermediary, a Content-
Length field value that is inconsistent with the received message framing
might cause a security failure due to request smuggling or response
splitting.

As a result, a sender MUST NOT forward a message with a Content-

Length header field value that is known to be incorrect.

Likewise, a sender MUST NOT forward a message with a Content-Length

header field value that does not match the ABNF above, with one
exception: a recipient of a Content-Length header field value consisting
of the same decimal value repeated as a comma-separated list (e.g,
"Content-Length: 42, 42") MAY either reject the message as invalid or
replace that invalid field value with a single instance of the decimal value,
since this likely indicates that a duplicate was generated or combined by
an upstream message processor.

8.7. Content-Location
The "Content-Location" header field references a URI that can be used as
an identifier for a specific resource corresponding to the representation
in this message's content. In other words, if one were to perform a GET
request on this URI at the time of this message's generation, then a 200
(OK) response would contain the same representation that is enclosed as
content in this message.

Content-Location = absolute-URI / partial-URI

The field value is either an absolute-URI or a partial-URI. In the latter
case (Section 4), the referenced URI is relative to the target URI ([URI],
Section 5).

The Content-Location value is not a replacement for the target URI

(Section 7.1). It is representation metadata. It has the same syntax and
semantics as the header field of the same name defined for MIME body
parts in Section 4 of [RFC2557]. However, its appearance in an HTTP
message has some special implications for HTTP recipients.

If Content-Location is included in a 2xx (Successful) response message

and its value refers (after conversion to absolute form) to a URI that is
the same as the target URI, then the recipient MAY consider the content
to be a current representation of that resource at the time indicated by
the message origination date. For a GET (Section 9.3.1) or HEAD (Section
9.3.2) request, this is the same as the default semantics when no
Content-Location is provided by the server. For a state-changing request
like PUT (Section 9.3.4) or POST (Section 9.3.3), it implies that the server's
response contains the new representation of that resource, thereby
distinguishing it from representations that might only report about the
action (e.g., "It worked!"). This allows authoring applications to update
their local copies without the need for a subsequent GET request.

If Content-Location is included in a 2xx (Successful) response message

and its field value refers to a URI that differs from the target URI, then
the origin server claims that the URI is an identifier for a different
resource corresponding to the enclosed representation. Such a claim can
only be trusted if both identifiers share the same resource owner, which
cannot be programmatically determined via HTTP.

• For a response to a GET or HEAD request, this is an indication that

the target URI refers to a resource that is subject to content
negotiation and the Content-Location field value is a more specific
identifier for the selected representation.
• For a 201 (Created) response to a state-changing method, a
Content-Location field value that is identical to the Location field
value indicates that this content is a current representation of the
newly created resource.
• Otherwise, such a Content-Location indicates that this content is a
representation reporting on the requested action's status and that
the same report is available (for future access with GET) at the given
 URI. For example, a purchase transaction made via a POST request
might include a receipt document as the content of the 200 (OK)
response; the Content-Location field value provides an identifier for
retrieving a copy of that same receipt in the future.

A user agent that sends Content-Location in a request message is stating

that its value refers to where the user agent originally obtained the
content of the enclosed representation (prior to any modifications made
by that user agent). In other words, the user agent is providing a back
link to the source of the original representation.

An origin server that receives a Content-Location field in a request

message MUST treat the information as transitory request context rather
than as metadata to be saved verbatim as part of the representation. An
origin server MAY use that context to guide in processing the request or
to save it for other uses, such as within source links or versioning
metadata. However, an origin server MUST NOT use such context
information to alter the request semantics.

For example, if a client makes a PUT request on a negotiated resource

and the origin server accepts that PUT (without redirection), then the
new state of that resource is expected to be consistent with the one
representation supplied in that PUT; the Content-Location cannot be
used as a form of reverse content selection identifier to update only one
of the negotiated representations. If the user agent had wanted the latter
semantics, it would have applied the PUT directly to the Content-
Location URI.

8.8. Validator Fields

Resource metadata is referred to as a validator if it can be used within a
precondition (Section 13.1) to make a conditional request (Section 13).
Validator fields convey a current validator for the selected representation
(Section 3.2).

In responses to safe requests, validator fields describe the selected

representation chosen by the origin server while handling the response.
Note that, depending on the method and status code semantics, the
selected representation for a given response is not necessarily the same
as the representation enclosed as response content.

In a successful response to a state-changing request, validator fields

describe the new representation that has replaced the prior selected
representation as a result of processing the request.

For example, an ETag field in a 201 (Created) response communicates the

entity tag of the newly created resource's representation, so that the
entity tag can be used as a validator in later conditional requests to
prevent the "lost update" problem.

This specification defines two forms of metadata that are commonly

used to observe resource state and test for preconditions: modification
dates (Section 8.8.2) and opaque entity tags (Section 8.8.3). Additional
metadata that reflects resource state has been defined by various
extensions of HTTP, such as Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning
[WEBDAV], that are beyond the scope of this specification.

8.8.1. Weak versus Strong

Validators come in two flavors: strong or weak. Weak validators are easy
to generate but are far less useful for comparisons. Strong validators are
ideal for comparisons but can be very difficult (and occasionally
impossible) to generate efficiently. Rather than impose that all forms of
resource adhere to the same strength of validator, HTTP exposes the
type of validator in use and imposes restrictions on when weak validators
can be used as preconditions.

A strong validator is representation metadata that changes value

whenever a change occurs to the representation data that would be
observable in the content of a 200 (OK) response to GET.

A strong validator might change for reasons other than a change to the
representation data, such as when a semantically significant part of the
representation metadata is changed (e.g., Content-Type), but it is in the
best interests of the origin server to only change the value when it is
necessary to invalidate the stored responses held by remote caches and
authoring tools.

Cache entries might persist for arbitrarily long periods, regardless of

expiration times. Thus, a cache might attempt to validate an entry using
a validator that it obtained in the distant past. A strong validator is
unique across all versions of all representations associated with a
particular resource over time. However, there is no implication of
uniqueness across representations of different resources (i.e., the same
strong validator might be in use for representations of multiple
resources at the same time and does not imply that those
representations are equivalent).

There are a variety of strong validators used in practice. The best are
based on strict revision control, wherein each change to a representation
always results in a unique node name and revision identifier being
assigned before the representation is made accessible to GET. A
collision-resistant hash function applied to the representation data is
also sufficient if the data is available prior to the response header fields
being sent and the digest does not need to be recalculated every time a
validation request is received. However, if a resource has distinct
representations that differ only in their metadata, such as might occur
with content negotiation over media types that happen to share the
same data format, then the origin server needs to incorporate additional
information in the validator to distinguish those representations.

In contrast, a weak validator is representation metadata that might not

change for every change to the representation data. This weakness might
be due to limitations in how the value is calculated (e.g., clock
resolution), an inability to ensure uniqueness for all possible
representations of the resource, or a desire of the resource owner to
group representations by some self-determined set of equivalency rather
than unique sequences of data.

An origin server SHOULD change a weak entity tag whenever it considers

prior representations to be unacceptable as a substitute for the current
representation. In other words, a weak entity tag ought to change
whenever the origin server wants caches to invalidate old responses.

For example, the representation of a weather report that changes in

content every second, based on dynamic measurements, might be
grouped into sets of equivalent representations (from the origin server's
perspective) with the same weak validator in order to allow cached
representations to be valid for a reasonable period of time (perhaps
adjusted dynamically based on server load or weather quality). Likewise,
a representation's modification time, if defined with only one-second
resolution, might be a weak validator if it is possible for the
representation to be modified twice during a single second and retrieved
between those modifications.
Likewise, a validator is weak if it is shared by two or more
representations of a given resource at the same time, unless those
representations have identical representation data. For example, if the
origin server sends the same validator for a representation with a gzip
content coding applied as it does for a representation with no content
coding, then that validator is weak. However, two simultaneous
representations might share the same strong validator if they differ only
in the representation metadata, such as when two different media types
are available for the same representation data.

Strong validators are usable for all conditional requests, including cache
validation, partial content ranges, and "lost update" avoidance. Weak
validators are only usable when the client does not require exact equality
with previously obtained representation data, such as when validating a
cache entry or limiting a web traversal to recent changes.

8.8.2. Last-Modified
The "Last-Modified" header field in a response provides a timestamp
indicating the date and time at which the origin server believes the
selected representation was last modified, as determined at the
conclusion of handling the request.

Last-Modified = HTTP-date

An example of its use is

Last-Modified: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 12:45:26 GMT

8.8.2.1. Generation
An origin server SHOULD send Last-Modified for any selected
representation for which a last modification date can be reasonably and
consistently determined, since its use in conditional requests and
evaluating cache freshness ([CACHING]) can substantially reduce
unnecessary transfers and significantly improve service availability and
scalability.

A representation is typically the sum of many parts behind the resource

interface. The last-modified time would usually be the most recent time
that any of those parts were changed. How that value is determined for
any given resource is an implementation detail beyond the scope of this
specification.
An origin server SHOULD obtain the Last-Modified value of the
representation as close as possible to the time that it generates the Date
field value for its response. This allows a recipient to make an accurate
assessment of the representation's modification time, especially if the
representation changes near the time that the response is generated.

An origin server with a clock (as defined in Section 5.6.7) MUST NOT
generate a Last-Modified date that is later than the server's time of
message origination (Date, Section 6.6.1). If the last modification time is
derived from implementation-specific metadata that evaluates to some
time in the future, according to the origin server's clock, then the origin
server MUST replace that value with the message origination date. This
prevents a future modification date from having an adverse impact on
cache validation.

An origin server without a clock MUST NOT generate a Last-Modified

date for a response unless that date value was assigned to the resource
by some other system (presumably one with a clock).

8.8.2.2. Comparison
A Last-Modified time, when used as a validator in a request, is implicitly
weak unless it is possible to deduce that it is strong, using the following
rules:

• The validator is being compared by an origin server to the actual

current validator for the representation and,
• That origin server reliably knows that the associated representation
did not change twice during the second covered by the presented
validator;

or

• The validator is about to be used by a client in an If-Modified-Since,

If-Unmodified-Since, or If-Range header field, because the client has
a cache entry for the associated representation, and
• That cache entry includes a Date value which is at least one second
after the Last-Modified value and the client has reason to believe
that they were generated by the same clock or that there is enough
difference between the Last-Modified and Date values to make clock
synchronization issues unlikely;
or

• The validator is being compared by an intermediate cache to the

validator stored in its cache entry for the representation, and
• That cache entry includes a Date value which is at least one second
after the Last-Modified value and the cache has reason to believe
that they were generated by the same clock or that there is enough
difference between the Last-Modified and Date values to make clock
synchronization issues unlikely.

This method relies on the fact that if two different responses were sent
by the origin server during the same second, but both had the same
Last-Modified time, then at least one of those responses would have a
Date value equal to its Last-Modified time.

8.8.3. ETag
The "ETag" field in a response provides the current entity tag for the
selected representation, as determined at the conclusion of handling the
request. An entity tag is an opaque validator for differentiating between
multiple representations of the same resource, regardless of whether
those multiple representations are due to resource state changes over
time, content negotiation resulting in multiple representations being
valid at the same time, or both. An entity tag consists of an opaque
quoted string, possibly prefixed by a weakness indicator.

ETag = entity-tag

entity-tag = [ weak ] opaque-tag

weak = %s"W/"
opaque-tag = DQUOTE *etagc DQUOTE
etagc = %x21 / %x23-7E / obs-text
; VCHAR except double quotes, plus obs-text

Note: Previously, opaque-tag was defined to be a quoted-string

([RFC2616], Section 3.11); thus, some recipients might perform backslash
unescaping. Servers therefore ought to avoid backslash characters in
entity tags.

An entity tag can be more reliable for validation than a modification date
in situations where it is inconvenient to store modification dates, where
the one-second resolution of HTTP-date values is not sufficient, or where
modification dates are not consistently maintained.
Examples:

ETag: "xyzzy"
ETag: W/"xyzzy"
ETag: ""

An entity tag can be either a weak or strong validator, with strong being
the default. If an origin server provides an entity tag for a representation
and the generation of that entity tag does not satisfy all of the
characteristics of a strong validator (Section 8.8.1), then the origin server
MUST mark the entity tag as weak by prefixing its opaque value with
"W/" (case-sensitive).

A sender MAY send the ETag field in a trailer section (see Section 6.5).
However, since trailers are often ignored, it is preferable to send ETag as
a header field unless the entity tag is generated while sending the
content.

8.8.3.1. Generation
The principle behind entity tags is that only the service author knows the
implementation of a resource well enough to select the most accurate
and efficient validation mechanism for that resource, and that any such
mechanism can be mapped to a simple sequence of octets for easy
comparison. Since the value is opaque, there is no need for the client to
be aware of how each entity tag is constructed.

For example, a resource that has implementation-specific versioning

applied to all changes might use an internal revision number, perhaps
combined with a variance identifier for content negotiation, to accurately
differentiate between representations. Other implementations might use
a collision-resistant hash of representation content, a combination of
various file attributes, or a modification timestamp that has sub-second
resolution.

An origin server SHOULD send an ETag for any selected representation

for which detection of changes can be reasonably and consistently
determined, since the entity tag's use in conditional requests and
evaluating cache freshness ([CACHING]) can substantially reduce
unnecessary transfers and significantly improve service availability,
scalability, and reliability.

8.8.3.2. Comparison
There are two entity tag comparison functions, depending on whether or
not the comparison context allows the use of weak validators:

Strong comparison: two entity tags are equivalent if both are not
weak and their opaque-tags match character-by-character.

Weak comparison: two entity tags are equivalent if their opaque-

tags match character-by-character, regardless of either or both being
tagged as "weak".

The example below shows the results for a set of entity tag pairs and
both the weak and strong comparison function results:

ETag 1 ETag 2 Strong Comparison Weak Comparison

W/"1" W/"1" no match match
W/"1" W/"2" no match no match
W/"1" "1" no match match
"1" "1" match match

Table 3

8.8.3.3. Example: Entity Tags Varying on Content-

Negotiated Resources
Consider a resource that is subject to content negotiation (Section 12),
and where the representations sent in response to a GET request vary
based on the Accept-Encoding request header field (Section 12.5.3):

>> Request:

GET /index HTTP/1.1

Host: www.example.com
Accept-Encoding: gzip

In this case, the response might or might not use the gzip content
coding. If it does not, the response might look like:

>> Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:05:00 GMT
ETag: "123-a"
Content-Length: 70
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/plain

Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!

An alternative representation that does use gzip content coding would

be:

>> Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:05:00 GMT
ETag: "123-b"
Content-Length: 43
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Encoding: gzip

...binary data...

Note: Content codings are a property of the representation data, so a

strong entity tag for a content-encoded representation has to be distinct
from the entity tag of an unencoded representation to prevent potential
conflicts during cache updates and range requests. In contrast, transfer
codings (Section 7 of [HTTP/1.1]) apply only during message transfer and
do not result in distinct entity tags.

9. Methods
9.1. Overview
The request method token is the primary source of request semantics; it
indicates the purpose for which the client has made this request and
what is expected by the client as a successful result.

The request method's semantics might be further specialized by the

semantics of some header fields when present in a request if those
additional semantics do not conflict with the method. For example, a
client can send conditional request header fields (Section 13.1) to make
the requested action conditional on the current state of the target
resource.

HTTP is designed to be usable as an interface to distributed object

systems. The request method invokes an action to be applied to a target
resource in much the same way that a remote method invocation can be
sent to an identified object.

method = token

The method token is case-sensitive because it might be used as a

gateway to object-based systems with case-sensitive method names. By
convention, standardized methods are defined in all-uppercase US-ASCII
letters.

Unlike distributed objects, the standardized request methods in HTTP are

not resource-specific, since uniform interfaces provide for better visibility
and reuse in network-based systems [REST]. Once defined, a
standardized method ought to have the same semantics when applied to
any resource, though each resource determines for itself whether those
semantics are implemented or allowed.

This specification defines a number of standardized methods that are

commonly used in HTTP, as outlined by the following table.

Method
Description Section
Name
Transfer a current representation of the
GET 9.3.1
target resource.
Same as GET, but do not transfer the
HEAD 9.3.2
response content.
Perform resource-specific processing on the
POST 9.3.3
request content.
Replace all current representations of the
PUT 9.3.4
target resource with the request content.
Remove all current representations of the
DELETE 9.3.5
target resource.
Establish a tunnel to the server identified by
CONNECT 9.3.6
the target resource.

Table 4
Method
Description Section
Name
Describe the communication options for
OPTIONS 9.3.7
the target resource.
Perform a message loop-back test along
TRACE 9.3.8
the path to the target resource.

All general-purpose servers MUST support the methods GET and HEAD.
All other methods are OPTIONAL.

The set of methods allowed by a target resource can be listed in an

Allow header field (Section 10.2.1). However, the set of allowed methods
can change dynamically. An origin server that receives a request method
that is unrecognized or not implemented SHOULD respond with the 501
(Not Implemented) status code. An origin server that receives a request
method that is recognized and implemented, but not allowed for the
target resource, SHOULD respond with the 405 (Method Not Allowed)
status code.

Additional methods, outside the scope of this specification, have been

specified for use in HTTP. All such methods ought to be registered within
the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Method Registry", as described
in Section 16.1.

9.2. Common Method Properties

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

This definition of safe methods does not prevent an implementation

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

Of the request methods defined by this specification, the GET, HEAD,

OPTIONS, and TRACE methods are defined to be safe.

The purpose of distinguishing between safe and unsafe methods is to

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

A user agent SHOULD distinguish between safe and unsafe methods

when presenting potential actions to a user, such that the user can be
made aware of an unsafe action before it is requested.

When a resource is constructed such that parameters within the target

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

9.2.2. Idempotent Methods

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

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

Idempotent methods are distinguished because the request can be

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

A client SHOULD NOT automatically retry a request with a non-

idempotent method unless it has some means to know that the request
semantics are actually idempotent, regardless of the method, or some
means to detect that the original request was never applied.

For example, a user agent can repeat a POST request automatically if it

knows (through design or configuration) that the request is safe for that
resource. Likewise, a user agent designed specifically to operate on a
version control repository might be able to recover from partial failure
conditions by checking the target resource revision(s) after a failed
connection, reverting or fixing any changes that were partially applied,
and then automatically retrying the requests that failed.

Some clients take a riskier approach and attempt to guess when an

automatic retry is possible. For example, a client might automatically
retry a POST request if the underlying transport connection closed
before any part of a response is received, particularly if an idle persistent
connection was used.

A proxy MUST NOT automatically retry non-idempotent requests. A

client SHOULD NOT automatically retry a failed automatic retry.

9.2.3. Methods and Caching

For a cache to store and use a response, the associated method needs to
explicitly allow caching and to detail under what conditions a response
can be used to satisfy subsequent requests; a method definition that
does not do so cannot be cached. For additional requirements see
[CACHING].

This specification defines caching semantics for GET, HEAD, and POST,
although the overwhelming majority of cache implementations only
support GET and HEAD.

9.3. Method Definitions

9.3.1. GET
The GET method requests transfer of a current selected representation
for the target resource. A successful response reflects the quality of
"sameness" identified by the target URI (Section 1.2.2 of [URI]). Hence,
retrieving identifiable information via HTTP is usually performed by
making a GET request on an identifier associated with the potential for
providing that information in a 200 (OK) response.

GET is the primary mechanism of information retrieval and the focus of

almost all performance optimizations. Applications that produce a URI
for each important resource can benefit from those optimizations while
enabling their reuse by other applications, creating a network effect that
promotes further expansion of the Web.

It is tempting to think of resource identifiers as remote file system

pathnames and of representations as being a copy of the contents of
such files. In fact, that is how many resources are implemented (see
Section 17.3 for related security considerations). However, there are no
such limitations in practice.

The HTTP interface for a resource is just as likely to be implemented as a

tree of content objects, a programmatic view on various database
records, or a gateway to other information systems. Even when the URI
mapping mechanism is tied to a file system, an origin server might be
configured to execute the files with the request as input and send the
output as the representation rather than transfer the files directly.
Regardless, only the origin server needs to know how each resource
identifier corresponds to an implementation and how that
implementation manages to select and send a current representation of
the target resource.

A client can alter the semantics of GET to be a "range request",

requesting transfer of only some part(s) of the selected representation,
by sending a Range header field in the request (Section 14.2).

Although request message framing is independent of the method used,

content received in a GET request has no generally defined semantics,
cannot alter the meaning or target of the request, and might lead some
implementations to reject the request and close the connection because
of its potential as a request smuggling attack (Section 11.2 of
[HTTP/1.1]). A client SHOULD NOT generate content in a GET request
unless it is made directly to an origin server that has previously indicated,
in or out of band, that such a request has a purpose and will be
adequately supported. An origin server SHOULD NOT rely on private
agreements to receive content, since participants in HTTP
communication are often unaware of intermediaries along the request
chain.

The response to a GET request is cacheable; a cache MAY use it to satisfy

subsequent GET and HEAD requests unless otherwise indicated by the
Cache-Control header field (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]).

When information retrieval is performed with a mechanism that

constructs a target URI from user-provided information, such as the
query fields of a form using GET, potentially sensitive data might be
provided that would not be appropriate for disclosure within a URI (see
Section 17.9). In some cases, the data can be filtered or transformed such
that it would not reveal such information. In others, particularly when
there is no benefit from caching a response, using the POST method
(Section 9.3.3) instead of GET can transmit such information in the
request content rather than within the target URI.

9.3.2. HEAD
The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT
send content in the response. HEAD is used to obtain metadata about
the selected representation without transferring its representation data,
often for the sake of testing hypertext links or finding recent
modifications.

The server SHOULD send the same header fields in response to a HEAD
request as it would have sent if the request method had been GET.
However, a server MAY omit header fields for which a value is
determined only while generating the content. For example, some
servers buffer a dynamic response to GET until a minimum amount of
data is generated so that they can more efficiently delimit small
responses or make late decisions with regard to content selection. Such a
response to GET might contain Content-Length and Vary fields, for
example, that are not generated within a HEAD response. These minor
inconsistencies are considered preferable to generating and discarding
the content for a HEAD request, since HEAD is usually requested for the
sake of efficiency.

Although request message framing is independent of the method used,

content received in a HEAD request has no generally defined semantics,
cannot alter the meaning or target of the request, and might lead some
implementations to reject the request and close the connection because
of its potential as a request smuggling attack (Section 11.2 of
[HTTP/1.1]). A client SHOULD NOT generate content in a HEAD request
unless it is made directly to an origin server that has previously indicated,
in or out of band, that such a request has a purpose and will be
adequately supported. An origin server SHOULD NOT rely on private
agreements to receive content, since participants in HTTP
communication are often unaware of intermediaries along the request
chain.

The response to a HEAD request is cacheable; a cache MAY use it to

satisfy subsequent HEAD requests unless otherwise indicated by the
Cache-Control header field (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]). A HEAD response
might also affect previously cached responses to GET; see Section 4.3.5
of [CACHING].

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

• 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 could
be received in a response to POST (the exceptions being 206 (Partial
Content), 304 (Not Modified), and 416 (Range Not Satisfiable)).

If one or more resources has been created on the origin server as a result
of successfully processing a POST request, the origin server SHOULD
send a 201 (Created) response containing a Location header field that
provides an identifier for the primary resource created (Section 10.2.2)
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]) and a
Content-Location header field that has the same value as the POST's
target URI (Section 8.7). A cached POST response can be reused to satisfy
a later GET or HEAD request. In contrast, a POST request cannot be
satisfied by a cached POST response because POST is potentially unsafe;
see Section 4 of [CACHING].

If the result of processing a POST would be equivalent to a

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

9.3.4. PUT
The PUT method requests that the state of the target resource be
created or replaced with the state defined by the representation
enclosed in the request message content. A successful PUT of a given
representation would suggest that a subsequent GET on that same
target resource will result in an equivalent representation being sent in a
200 (OK) response. However, there is no guarantee that such a state
change will be observable, since the target resource might be acted
upon by other user agents in parallel, or might be subject to dynamic
processing by the origin server, before any subsequent GET is received. A
successful response only implies that the user agent's intent was
achieved at the time of its processing by the origin server.
If the target resource does not have a current representation and the
PUT successfully creates one, then the origin server MUST inform the
user agent by sending a 201 (Created) response. If the target resource
does have a current representation and that representation is
successfully modified in accordance with the state of the enclosed
representation, then the origin server MUST send either a 200 (OK) or a
204 (No Content) response to indicate successful completion of the
request.

An origin server SHOULD verify that the PUT representation is consistent

with its configured constraints for the target resource. For example, if an
origin server determines a resource's representation metadata based on
the URI, then the origin server needs to ensure that the content received
in a successful PUT request is consistent with that metadata. When a PUT
representation is inconsistent with the target resource, the origin server
SHOULD either make them consistent, by transforming the
representation or changing the resource configuration, or respond with
an appropriate error message containing sufficient information to
explain why the representation is unsuitable. The 409 (Conflict) or 415
(Unsupported Media Type) status codes are suggested, with the latter
being specific to constraints on Content-Type values.

For example, if the target resource is configured to always have a

Content-Type of "text/html" and the representation being PUT has a
Content-Type of "image/jpeg", the origin server ought to do one of:

a. reconfigure the target resource to reflect the new media type;

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

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

This extends to how header and trailer fields are stored; while common
header fields like Content-Type will typically be stored and returned
upon subsequent GET requests, header and trailer field handling is
specific to the resource that received the request. As a result, an origin
server SHOULD ignore unrecognized header and trailer fields received in
a PUT request (i.e., not save them as part of the resource state).

An origin server MUST NOT send a validator field (Section 8.8), such as an
ETag or Last-Modified field, in a successful response to PUT unless the
request's representation data was saved without any transformation
applied to the content (i.e., the resource's new representation data is
identical to the content received in the PUT request) and the validator
field value reflects the new representation. This requirement allows a
user agent to know when the representation it sent (and retains in
memory) is the result of the PUT, and thus it doesn't need to be retrieved
again from the origin server. The new validator(s) received in the
response can be used for future conditional requests in order to prevent
accidental overwrites (Section 13.1).

The fundamental difference between the POST and PUT methods is

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

Proper interpretation of a PUT request presumes that the user agent

knows which target resource is desired. A service that selects a proper
URI on behalf of the client, after receiving a state-changing request,
SHOULD be implemented using the POST method rather than PUT. If the
origin server will not make the requested PUT state change to the target
resource and instead wishes to have it applied to a different resource,
such as when the resource has been moved to a different URI, then the
origin server MUST send an appropriate 3xx (Redirection) response; the
user agent MAY then make its own decision regarding whether or not to
redirect the request.
A PUT request applied to the target resource can have side effects on
other resources. For example, an article might have a URI for identifying
"the current version" (a resource) that is separate from the URIs
identifying each particular version (different resources that at one point
shared the same state as the current version resource). A successful PUT
request on "the current version" URI might therefore create a new
version resource in addition to changing the state of the target resource,
and might also cause links to be added between the related resources.

Some origin servers support use of the Content-Range header field

(Section 14.4) as a request modifier to perform a partial PUT, as
described in Section 14.5.

Responses to the PUT method are not cacheable. If a successful PUT

request passes through a cache that has one or more stored responses
for the target URI, those stored responses will be invalidated (see Section
4.4 of [CACHING]).

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

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.

Although request message framing is independent of the method used,

content received in a DELETE request has no generally defined semantics,
cannot alter the meaning or target of the request, and might lead some
implementations to reject the request and close the connection because
of its potential as a request smuggling attack (Section 11.2 of
[HTTP/1.1]). A client SHOULD NOT generate content in a DELETE request
unless it is made directly to an origin server that has previously indicated,
in or out of band, that such a request has a purpose and will be
adequately supported. An origin server SHOULD NOT rely on private
agreements to receive content, since participants in HTTP
communication are often unaware of intermediaries along the request
chain.

Responses to the DELETE method are not cacheable. If a successful

DELETE request passes through a cache that has one or more stored
responses for the target URI, those stored responses will be invalidated
(see Section 4.4 of [CACHING]).

9.3.6. CONNECT
The CONNECT method requests that the recipient establish a tunnel to
the destination origin server identified by the request target and, if
successful, thereafter restrict its behavior to blind forwarding of data, in
both directions, until the tunnel is closed. Tunnels are commonly used to
create an end-to-end virtual connection, through one or more proxies,
which can then be secured using TLS (Transport Layer Security, [TLS13]).
CONNECT uses a special form of request target, unique to this method,
consisting of only the host and port number of the tunnel destination,
separated by a colon. There is no default port; a client MUST send the
port number even if the CONNECT request is based on a URI reference
that contains an authority component with an elided port (Section 4.1).
For example,

CONNECT server.example.com:80 HTTP/1.1

Host: server.example.com

A server MUST reject a CONNECT request that targets an empty or

invalid port number, typically by responding with a 400 (Bad Request)
status code.

Because CONNECT changes the request/response nature of an HTTP

connection, specific HTTP versions might have different ways of mapping
its semantics into the protocol's wire format.

CONNECT is intended for use in requests to a proxy. The recipient can

establish a tunnel either by directly connecting to the server identified by
the request target or, if configured to use another proxy, by forwarding
the CONNECT request to the next inbound proxy. An origin server MAY
accept a CONNECT request, but most origin servers do not implement
CONNECT.

Any 2xx (Successful) response indicates that the sender (and all inbound
proxies) will switch to tunnel mode immediately after the response
header section; data received after that header section is from the server
identified by the request target. Any response other than a successful
response indicates that the tunnel has not yet been formed.

A tunnel is closed when a tunnel intermediary detects that either side

has closed its connection: the intermediary MUST attempt to send any
outstanding data that came from the closed side to the other side, close
both connections, and then discard any remaining data left undelivered.

Proxy authentication might be used to establish the authority to create a

tunnel. For example,

CONNECT server.example.com:443 HTTP/1.1

Host: server.example.com:443
Proxy-Authorization: basic aGVsbG86d29ybGQ=
There are significant risks in establishing a tunnel to arbitrary servers,
particularly when the destination is a well-known or reserved TCP port
that is not intended for Web traffic. For example, a CONNECT to
"example.com:25" would suggest that the proxy connect to the reserved
port for SMTP traffic; if allowed, that could trick the proxy into relaying
spam email. Proxies that support CONNECT SHOULD restrict its use to a
limited set of known ports or a configurable list of safe request targets.

A server MUST NOT send any Transfer-Encoding or Content-Length

header fields in a 2xx (Successful) response to CONNECT. A client MUST
ignore any Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header fields received
in a successful response to CONNECT.

A CONNECT request message does not have content. The interpretation

of data sent after the header section of the CONNECT request message
is specific to the version of HTTP in use.

Responses to the CONNECT method are not cacheable.

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

An OPTIONS request with an asterisk ("*") as the request target (Section

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

If the request target is not an asterisk, the OPTIONS request applies to

the options that are available when communicating with the target
resource.

A server generating a successful response to OPTIONS SHOULD send

any header that might indicate optional features implemented by the
server and applicable to the target resource (e.g., Allow), including
potential extensions not defined by this specification. The response
content, if any, might also describe the communication options in a
machine or human-readable representation. A standard format for such
a representation is not defined by this specification, but might be
defined by future extensions to HTTP.

A client MAY send a Max-Forwards header field in an OPTIONS request

to target a specific recipient in the request chain (see Section 7.6.2). A
proxy MUST NOT generate a Max-Forwards header field while forwarding
a request unless that request was received with a Max-Forwards field.

A client that generates an OPTIONS request containing content MUST

send a valid Content-Type header field describing the representation
media type. Note that this specification does not define any use for such
content.

Responses to the OPTIONS method are not cacheable.

9.3.8. TRACE
The TRACE method requests a remote, application-level loop-back of the
request message. The final recipient of the request SHOULD reflect the
message received, excluding some fields described below, back to the
client as the content of a 200 (OK) response. The "message/http" format
(Section 10.1 of [HTTP/1.1]) is one way to do so. The final recipient is
either the origin server or the first server to receive a Max-Forwards
value of zero (0) in the request (Section 7.6.2).

A client MUST NOT generate fields in a TRACE request containing

sensitive data that might be disclosed by the response. For example, it
would be foolish for a user agent to send stored user credentials (Section
11) or cookies [COOKIE] in a TRACE request. The final recipient of the
request SHOULD exclude any request fields that are likely to contain
sensitive data when that recipient generates the response content.

TRACE allows the client to see what is being received at the other end of
the request chain and use that data for testing or diagnostic information.
The value of the Via header field (Section 7.6.3) is of particular interest,
since it acts as a trace of the request chain. Use of the Max-Forwards
header field allows the client to limit the length of the request chain,
which is useful for testing a chain of proxies forwarding messages in an
infinite loop.

A client MUST NOT send content in a TRACE request.

Responses to the TRACE method are not cacheable.

10. Message Context

10.1. Request Context Fields
The request header fields below provide additional information about
the request context, including information about the user, user agent,
and resource behind the request.

10.1.1. Expect
The "Expect" header field in a request indicates a certain set of behaviors
(expectations) that need to be supported by the server in order to
properly handle this request.

Expect = #expectation
expectation = token [ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) parameters ]

The Expect field value is case-insensitive.

The only expectation defined by this specification is "100-continue" (with

no defined parameters).

A server that receives an Expect field value containing a member other

than 100-continue MAY respond with a 417 (Expectation Failed) status
code to indicate that the unexpected expectation cannot be met.

A 100-continue expectation informs recipients that the client is about to

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

For example, a request that begins with

PUT /somewhere/fun HTTP/1.1

Host: origin.example.com
Content-Type: video/h264
Content-Length: 1234567890987
Expect: 100-continue

allows the origin server to immediately respond with an error message,

such as 401 (Unauthorized) or 405 (Method Not Allowed), before the
client starts filling the pipes with an unnecessary data transfer.

Requirements for clients:

• A client MUST NOT generate a 100-continue expectation in a

request that does not include content.
• A client that will wait for a 100 (Continue) response before sending
the request content MUST send an Expect header field containing a
100-continue expectation.
• A client that sends a 100-continue expectation is not required to
wait for any specific length of time; such a client MAY proceed to
send the content even if it has not yet received a response.
Furthermore, since 100 (Continue) responses cannot be sent
through an HTTP/1.0 intermediary, such a client SHOULD NOT wait
for an indefinite period before sending the content.
• 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 content for the corresponding
request, or if the framing indicates that there is no content.
• A server that sends a 100 (Continue) response MUST ultimately send
a final status code, once it receives and processes the request
content, unless the connection is closed prematurely.
• A server that responds with a final status code before reading the
entire request content SHOULD indicate whether it intends to close
 the connection (e.g., see Section 9.6 of [HTTP/1.1]) or continue
reading the request content.

Upon receiving an HTTP/1.1 (or later) request that has a method, target
URI, and complete header section that contains a 100-continue
expectation and an indication that request content will follow, an origin
server MUST send either:

• an immediate response with a final status code, if that status can be

determined by examining just the method, target URI, and header
fields, or
• an immediate 100 (Continue) response to encourage the client to
send the request content.

The origin server MUST NOT wait for the content before sending the 100
(Continue) response.

Upon receiving an HTTP/1.1 (or later) request that has a method, target
URI, and complete header section that contains a 100-continue
expectation and indicates a request content will follow, a proxy MUST
either:

• send an immediate response with a final status code, if that status

can be determined by examining just the method, target URI, and
header fields, or
• forward the request toward the origin server by sending a
corresponding request-line and header section to the next inbound
server.

If the proxy believes (from configuration or past interaction) that the next
inbound server only supports HTTP/1.0, the proxy MAY generate an
immediate 100 (Continue) response to encourage the client to begin
sending the content.

10.1.2. From
The "From" header field contains an Internet email address for a human
user who controls the requesting user agent. The address ought to be
machine-usable, as defined by "mailbox" in Section 3.4 of [RFC5322]:

From = mailbox

mailbox = <mailbox, see [RFC5322], Section 3.4>

An example is:

From: [email protected]

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

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

A server SHOULD NOT use the From header field for access control or
authentication, since its value is expected to be visible to anyone
receiving or observing the request and is often recorded within logfiles
and error reports without any expectation of privacy.

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

Referer = absolute-URI / partial-URI

The field value is either an absolute-URI or a partial-URI. In the latter

case (Section 4), the referenced URI is relative to the target URI ([URI],
Section 5).

The Referer header field allows servers to generate back-links to other

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

Example:

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

The Referer header field value need not convey the full URI of the
referring resource; a user agent MAY truncate parts other than the
referring origin.

The Referer header field has the potential to reveal information about
the request context or browsing history of the user, which is a privacy
concern if the referring resource's identifier reveals personal information
(such as an account name) or a resource that is supposed to be
confidential (such as behind a firewall or internal to a secured service).
Most general-purpose user agents do not send the Referer header field
when the referring resource is a local "file" or "data" URI. A user agent
SHOULD NOT send a Referer header field if the referring resource was
accessed with a secure protocol and the request target has an origin
differing from that of the referring resource, unless the referring resource
explicitly allows Referer to be sent. A user agent MUST NOT send a
Referer header field in an unsecured HTTP request if the referring
resource was accessed with a secure protocol. See Section 17.9 for
additional security considerations.

Some intermediaries have been known to indiscriminately remove

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

10.1.4. TE
The "TE" header field describes capabilities of the client with regard to
transfer codings and trailer sections.

As described in Section 6.5, a TE field with a "trailers" member sent in a

request indicates that the client will not discard trailer fields.
TE is also used within HTTP/1.1 to advise servers about which transfer
codings the client is able to accept in a response. As of publication, only
HTTP/1.1 uses transfer codings (see Section 7 of [HTTP/1.1]).

The TE field value is a list of members, with each member (aside from
"trailers") consisting of a transfer coding name token with an optional
weight indicating the client's relative preference for that transfer coding
(Section 12.4.2) and optional parameters for that transfer coding.

TE = #t-codings
t-codings = "trailers" / ( transfer-coding [ weight ] )
transfer-coding = token *( OWS ";" OWS transfer-parameter )
transfer-parameter = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )

A sender of TE MUST also send a "TE" connection option within the

Connection header field (Section 7.6.1) to inform intermediaries not to
forward this field.

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

User-Agent = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )

The User-Agent field value consists of one or more product identifiers,

each followed by zero or more comments (Section 5.6.5), which together
identify the user agent software and its significant subproducts. By
convention, the product identifiers are listed in decreasing order of their
significance for identifying the user agent software. Each product
identifier consists of a name and optional version.

product = token ["/" product-version]

product-version = token

A sender SHOULD limit generated product identifiers to what is

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

Example:

User-Agent: CERN-LineMode/2.15 libwww/2.17b3

A user agent SHOULD NOT generate a User-Agent header field

containing needlessly fine-grained detail and SHOULD limit the addition
of subproducts by third parties. Overly long and detailed User-Agent
field values increase request latency and the risk of a user being
identified against their wishes ("fingerprinting").

Likewise, implementations are encouraged not to use the product tokens

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

10.2. Response Context Fields

The response header fields below provide additional information about
the response, beyond what is implied by the status code, including
information about the server, about the target resource, or about related
resources.

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

Allow = #method

Example of use:

Allow: GET, HEAD, PUT

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

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

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

Location = URI-reference

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

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

If the Location value provided in a 3xx (Redirection) response does not

have a fragment component, a user agent MUST process the redirection
as if the value inherits the fragment component of the URI reference
used to generate the target URI (i.e., the redirection inherits the original
reference's fragment, if any).

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

Location: /People.html#tim

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

People.html#tim"

Likewise, a GET request generated for the URI reference "http://

www.example.org/index.html#larry" might result in a 301 (Moved
Permanently) response containing the header field:

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

which suggests that the user agent redirect to "http://www.example.net/

index.html#larry", preserving the original fragment identifier.

There are circumstances in which a fragment identifier in a Location

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

Note: Some recipients attempt to recover from Location header fields

that are not valid URI references. This specification does not mandate or
define such processing, but does allow it for the sake of robustness. A
Location field value cannot allow a list of members because the comma
list separator is a valid data character within a URI-reference. If an invalid
message is sent with multiple Location field lines, a recipient along the
path might combine those field lines into one value. Recovery of a valid
Location field value from that situation is difficult and not interoperable
across implementations.

Note: The Content-Location header field (Section 8.7) differs from

Location in that the Content-Location refers to the most specific
resource corresponding to the enclosed representation. It is therefore
possible for a response to contain both the Location and Content-
Location header fields.

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

The Retry-After field value can be either an HTTP-date or a number of

seconds to delay after receiving the response.

Retry-After = HTTP-date / delay-seconds

A delay-seconds value is a non-negative decimal integer, representing

time in seconds.

delay-seconds = 1*DIGIT

Two examples of its use are

Retry-After: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT

Retry-After: 120

In the latter example, the delay is 2 minutes.

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

Server = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )

The Server header field value consists of one or more product identifiers,
each followed by zero or more comments (Section 5.6.5), which together
identify the origin server software and its significant subproducts. By
convention, the product identifiers are listed in decreasing order of their
significance for identifying the origin server software. Each product
identifier consists of a name and optional version, as defined in Section
10.1.5.

Example:

Server: CERN/3.0 libwww/2.17

An origin server SHOULD NOT generate a Server header field containing

needlessly fine-grained detail and SHOULD limit the addition of
subproducts by third parties. Overly long and detailed Server field values
increase response latency and potentially reveal internal implementation
details that might make it (slightly) easier for attackers to find and exploit
known security holes.

11. HTTP Authentication

11.1. Authentication Scheme
HTTP provides a general framework for access control and
authentication, via an extensible set of challenge-response
authentication schemes, which can be used by a server to challenge a
client request and by a client to provide authentication information. It
uses a case-insensitive token to identify the authentication scheme:

auth-scheme = token

Aside from the general framework, this document does not specify any
authentication schemes. New and existing authentication schemes are
specified independently and ought to be registered within the
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Authentication Scheme Registry". For
example, the "basic" and "digest" authentication schemes are defined by
[RFC7617] and [RFC7616], respectively.

11.2. Authentication Parameters

The authentication scheme is followed by additional information
necessary for achieving authentication via that scheme as either a
comma-separated list of parameters or a single sequence of characters
capable of holding base64-encoded information.

token68 = 1*( ALPHA / DIGIT /

"-" / "." / "_" / "~" / "+" / "/" ) *"="

The token68 syntax allows the 66 unreserved URI characters ([URI]), plus
a few others, so that it can hold a base64, base64url (URL and filename
safe alphabet), base32, or base16 (hex) encoding, with or without
padding, but excluding whitespace ([RFC4648]).

Authentication parameters are name/value pairs, where the name token

is matched case-insensitively and each parameter name MUST only occur
once per challenge.

auth-param = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )

Parameter values can be expressed either as "token" or as "quoted-

string" (Section 5.6). Authentication scheme definitions need to accept
both notations, both for senders and recipients, to allow recipients to use
generic parsing components regardless of the authentication scheme.

For backwards compatibility, authentication scheme definitions can

restrict the format for senders to one of the two variants. This can be
important when it is known that deployed implementations will fail when
encountering one of the two formats.

11.3. Challenge and Response

A 401 (Unauthorized) response message is used by an origin server to
challenge the authorization of a user agent, including a WWW-
Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge applicable to
the requested resource.

A 407 (Proxy Authentication Required) response message is used by a

proxy to challenge the authorization of a client, including a Proxy-
Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge applicable to
the proxy for the requested resource.

challenge = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / #auth-param ) ]

Note: Many clients fail to parse a challenge that contains an unknown

scheme. A workaround for this problem is to list well-supported schemes
(such as "basic") first.

A user agent that wishes to authenticate itself with an origin server —

usually, but not necessarily, after receiving a 401 (Unauthorized) — can
do so by including an Authorization header field with the request.

A client that wishes to authenticate itself with a proxy — usually, but not
necessarily, after receiving a 407 (Proxy Authentication Required) — can
do so by including a Proxy-Authorization header field with the request.

11.4. Credentials
Both the Authorization field value and the Proxy-Authorization field
value contain the client's credentials for the realm of the resource being
requested, based upon a challenge received in a response (possibly at
some point in the past). When creating their values, the user agent ought
to do so by selecting the challenge with what it considers to be the most
secure auth-scheme that it understands, obtaining credentials from the
user as appropriate. Transmission of credentials within header field
values implies significant security considerations regarding the
confidentiality of the underlying connection, as described in Section
17.16.1.

credentials = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / #auth-param ) ]

Upon receipt of a request for a protected resource that omits credentials,
contains invalid credentials (e.g., a bad password) or partial credentials
(e.g., when the authentication scheme requires more than one round
trip), an origin server SHOULD send a 401 (Unauthorized) response that
contains a WWW-Authenticate header field with at least one (possibly
new) challenge applicable to the requested resource.

Likewise, upon receipt of a request that omits proxy credentials or

contains invalid or partial proxy credentials, a proxy that requires
authentication SHOULD generate a 407 (Proxy Authentication Required)
response that contains a Proxy-Authenticate header field with at least
one (possibly new) challenge applicable to the proxy.

A server that receives valid credentials that are not adequate to gain
access ought to respond with the 403 (Forbidden) status code (Section
15.5.4).

HTTP does not restrict applications to this simple challenge-response

framework for access authentication. Additional mechanisms can be
used, such as authentication at the transport level or via message
encapsulation, and with additional header fields specifying
authentication information. However, such additional mechanisms are
not defined by this specification.

Note that various custom mechanisms for user authentication use the
Set-Cookie and Cookie header fields, defined in [COOKIE], for passing
tokens related to authentication.

11.5. Establishing a Protection Space (Realm)

The realm authentication parameter is reserved for use by authentication
schemes that wish to indicate a scope of protection.

A protection space is defined by the origin (see Section 4.3.1) of the

server being accessed, in combination with the realm value if present.
These realms allow the protected resources on a server to be partitioned
into a set of protection spaces, each with its own authentication scheme
and/or authorization database. The realm value is a string, generally
assigned by the origin server, that can have additional semantics specific
to the authentication scheme. Note that a response can have multiple
challenges with the same auth-scheme but with different realms.
The protection space determines the domain over which credentials can
be automatically applied. If a prior request has been authorized, the user
agent MAY reuse the same credentials for all other requests within that
protection space for a period of time determined by the authentication
scheme, parameters, and/or user preferences (such as a configurable
inactivity timeout).

The extent of a protection space, and therefore the requests to which

credentials might be automatically applied, is not necessarily known to
clients without additional information. An authentication scheme might
define parameters that describe the extent of a protection space. Unless
specifically allowed by the authentication scheme, a single protection
space cannot extend outside the scope of its server.

For historical reasons, a sender MUST only generate the quoted-string

syntax. Recipients might have to support both token and quoted-string
syntax for maximum interoperability with existing clients that have been
accepting both notations for a long time.

11.6. Authenticating Users to Origin Servers

11.6.1. WWW-Authenticate
The "WWW-Authenticate" response header field indicates the
authentication scheme(s) and parameters applicable to the target
resource.

WWW-Authenticate = #challenge

A server generating a 401 (Unauthorized) response MUST send a WWW-

Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge. A server MAY
generate a WWW-Authenticate header field in other response messages
to indicate that supplying credentials (or different credentials) might
affect the response.

A proxy forwarding a response MUST NOT modify any WWW-

Authenticate header fields in that response.

User agents are advised to take special care in parsing the field value, as
it might contain more than one challenge, and each challenge can
contain a comma-separated list of authentication parameters.
Furthermore, the header field itself can occur multiple times.
For instance:

WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="simple", Newauth realm="apps",

type=1, title="Login to \"apps\""

This header field contains two challenges, one for the "Basic" scheme
with a realm value of "simple" and another for the "Newauth" scheme
with a realm value of "apps". It also contains two additional parameters,
"type" and "title".

Some user agents do not recognize this form, however. As a result,

sending a WWW-Authenticate field value with more than one member
on the same field line might not be interoperable.

Note: The challenge grammar production uses the list syntax as well.
Therefore, a sequence of comma, whitespace, and comma can be
considered either as applying to the preceding challenge, or to be an
empty entry in the list of challenges. In practice, this ambiguity does not
affect the semantics of the header field value and thus is harmless.

11.6.2. Authorization
The "Authorization" header field allows a user agent to authenticate itself
with an origin server — usually, but not necessarily, after receiving a 401
(Unauthorized) response. Its value consists of credentials containing the
authentication information of the user agent for the realm of the
resource being requested.

Authorization = credentials

If a request is authenticated and a realm specified, the same credentials

are presumed to be valid for all other requests within this realm
(assuming that the authentication scheme itself does not require
otherwise, such as credentials that vary according to a challenge value or
using synchronized clocks).

A proxy forwarding a request MUST NOT modify any Authorization

header fields in that request. See Section 3.5 of [CACHING] for details of
and requirements pertaining to handling of the Authorization header
field by HTTP caches.

11.6.3. Authentication-Info
HTTP authentication schemes can use the "Authentication-Info" response
field to communicate information after the client's authentication
credentials have been accepted. This information can include a
finalization message from the server (e.g., it can contain the server
authentication).

The field value is a list of parameters (name/value pairs), using the "auth-
param" syntax defined in Section 11.3. This specification only describes
the generic format; authentication schemes using Authentication-Info
will define the individual parameters. The "Digest" Authentication
Scheme, for instance, defines multiple parameters in Section 3.5 of
[RFC7616].

Authentication-Info = #auth-param

The Authentication-Info field can be used in any HTTP response,

independently of request method and status code. Its semantics are
defined by the authentication scheme indicated by the Authorization
header field (Section 11.6.2) of the corresponding request.

A proxy forwarding a response is not allowed to modify the field value in

any way.

Authentication-Info can be sent as a trailer field (Section 6.5) when the

authentication scheme explicitly allows this.

11.7. Authenticating Clients to Proxies

11.7.1. Proxy-Authenticate
The "Proxy-Authenticate" header field consists of at least one challenge
that indicates the authentication scheme(s) and parameters applicable to
the proxy for this request. A proxy MUST send at least one Proxy-
Authenticate header field in each 407 (Proxy Authentication Required)
response that it generates.

Proxy-Authenticate = #challenge

Unlike WWW-Authenticate, the Proxy-Authenticate header field applies

only to the next outbound client on the response chain. This is because
only the client that chose a given proxy is likely to have the credentials
necessary for authentication. However, when multiple proxies are used
within the same administrative domain, such as office and regional
caching proxies within a large corporate network, it is common for
credentials to be generated by the user agent and passed through the
hierarchy until consumed. Hence, in such a configuration, it will appear
as if Proxy-Authenticate is being forwarded because each proxy will send
the same challenge set.

Note that the parsing considerations for WWW-Authenticate apply to

this header field as well; see Section 11.6.1 for details.

11.7.2. Proxy-Authorization
The "Proxy-Authorization" header field allows the client to identify itself
(or its user) to a proxy that requires authentication. Its value consists of
credentials containing the authentication information of the client for the
proxy and/or realm of the resource being requested.

Proxy-Authorization = credentials

Unlike Authorization, the Proxy-Authorization header field applies only

to the next inbound proxy that demanded authentication using the
Proxy-Authenticate header field. When multiple proxies are used in a
chain, the Proxy-Authorization header field is consumed by the first
inbound proxy that was expecting to receive credentials. A proxy MAY
relay the credentials from the client request to the next proxy if that is
the mechanism by which the proxies cooperatively authenticate a given
request.

11.7.3. Proxy-Authentication-Info
The "Proxy-Authentication-Info" response header field is equivalent to
Authentication-Info, except that it applies to proxy authentication
(Section 11.3) and its semantics are defined by the authentication
scheme indicated by the Proxy-Authorization header field (Section
11.7.2) of the corresponding request:

Proxy-Authentication-Info = #auth-param

However, unlike Authentication-Info, the Proxy-Authentication-Info

header field applies only to the next outbound client on the response
chain. This is because only the client that chose a given proxy is likely to
have the credentials necessary for authentication. However, when
multiple proxies are used within the same administrative domain, such as
office and regional caching proxies within a large corporate network, it is
common for credentials to be generated by the user agent and passed
through the hierarchy until consumed. Hence, in such a configuration, it
will appear as if Proxy-Authentication-Info is being forwarded because
each proxy will send the same field value.

Proxy-Authentication-Info can be sent as a trailer field (Section 6.5) when

the authentication scheme explicitly allows this.

12. Content Negotiation

When responses convey content, whether indicating a success or an
error, the origin server often has different ways of representing that
information; for example, in different formats, languages, or encodings.
Likewise, different users or user agents might have differing capabilities,
characteristics, or preferences that could influence which representation,
among those available, would be best to deliver. For this reason, HTTP
provides mechanisms for content negotiation.

This specification defines three patterns of content negotiation that can

be made visible within the protocol: "proactive" negotiation, where the
server selects the representation based upon the user agent's stated
preferences; "reactive" negotiation, where the server provides a list of
representations for the user agent to choose from; and "request content"
negotiation, where the user agent selects the representation for a future
request based upon the server's stated preferences in past responses.

Other patterns of content negotiation include "conditional content",

where the representation consists of multiple parts that are selectively
rendered based on user agent parameters, "active content", where the
representation contains a script that makes additional (more specific)
requests based on the user agent characteristics, and "Transparent
Content Negotiation" ([RFC2295]), where content selection is performed
by an intermediary. These patterns are not mutually exclusive, and each
has trade-offs in applicability and practicality.

Note that, in all cases, HTTP is not aware of the resource semantics. The
consistency with which an origin server responds to requests, over time
and over the varying dimensions of content negotiation, and thus the
"sameness" of a resource's observed representations over time, is
determined entirely by whatever entity or algorithm selects or generates
those responses.

12.1. Proactive Negotiation

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

Proactive negotiation is advantageous when the algorithm for selecting

from among the available representations is difficult to describe to a user
agent, or when the server desires to send its "best guess" to the user
agent along with the first response (when that "best guess" is good
enough for the user, this avoids the round-trip delay of a subsequent
request). In order to improve the server's guess, a user agent MAY send
request header fields that describe its preferences.

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 12.5.5) is often sent in a response subject to

proactive negotiation to indicate what parts of the request information
were used in the selection algorithm.

The request header fields Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Encoding, and

Accept-Language are defined below for a user agent to engage in
proactive negotiation of the response content. The preferences sent in
these fields apply to any content in the response, including
representations of the target resource, representations of error or
processing status, and potentially even the miscellaneous text strings
that might appear within the protocol.

12.2. Reactive Negotiation

With reactive negotiation (a.k.a., agent-driven negotiation), selection of
content (regardless of the status code) is performed by the user agent
after receiving an initial response. The mechanism for reactive
negotiation might be as simple as a list of references to alternative
representations.

If the user agent is not satisfied by the initial response content, it can
perform a GET request on one or more of the alternative resources to
obtain a different representation. Selection of such alternatives might be
performed automatically (by the user agent) or manually (e.g., by the
user selecting from a hypertext menu).

A server might choose not to send an initial representation, other than

the list of alternatives, and thereby indicate that reactive negotiation by
the user agent is preferred. For example, the alternatives listed in
responses with the 300 (Multiple Choices) and 406 (Not Acceptable)
status codes include information about available representations so that
the user or user agent can react by making a selection.

Reactive negotiation is advantageous when the response would vary

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

Reactive negotiation suffers from the disadvantages of transmitting a list

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

12.3. Request Content Negotiation

When content negotiation preferences are sent in a server's response,
the listed preferences are called request content negotiation because they
intend to influence selection of an appropriate content for subsequent
requests to that resource. For example, the Accept (Section 12.5.1) and
Accept-Encoding (Section 12.5.3) header fields can be sent in a response
to indicate preferred media types and content codings for subsequent
requests to that resource.

Similarly, Section 3.1 of [RFC5789] defines the "Accept-Patch" response

header field, which allows discovery of which content types are accepted
in PATCH requests.

12.4. Content Negotiation Field Features

12.4.1. Absence
For each of the content negotiation fields, a request that does not
contain the field implies that the sender has no preference on that
dimension of negotiation.

If a content negotiation header field is present in a request and none of

the available representations for the response can be considered
acceptable according to it, the origin server can either honor the header
field by sending a 406 (Not Acceptable) response or disregard the
header field by treating the response as if it is not subject to content
negotiation for that request header field. This does not imply, however,
that the client will be able to use the representation.

Note: A user agent sending these header fields makes it easier for a
server to identify an individual by virtue of the user agent's request
characteristics (Section 17.13).

12.4.2. Quality Values

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

The weight is normalized to a real number in the range 0 through 1,

where 0.001 is the least preferred and 1 is the most preferred; a value of
0 means "not acceptable". If no "q" parameter is present, the default
weight is 1.

weight = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue

qvalue = ( "0" [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] )
/ ( "1" [ "." 0*3("0") ] )

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

12.4.3. Wildcard Values

Most of these header fields, where indicated, define a wildcard value ("*")
to select unspecified values. If no wildcard is present, values that are not
explicitly mentioned in the field are considered unacceptable. Within
Vary, the wildcard value means that the variance is unlimited.

Note: In practice, using wildcards in content negotiation has limited

practical value because it is seldom useful to say, for example, "I prefer
image/* more or less than (some other specific value)". By sending
Accept: */*;q=0, clients can explicitly request a 406 (Not Acceptable)
response if a more preferred format is not available, but they still need to
be able to handle a different response since the server is allowed to
ignore their preference.

12.5. Content Negotiation Fields

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

When sent by a server in a response, Accept provides information about

which content types are preferred in the content of a subsequent request
to the same resource.

Accept = #( media-range [ weight ] )

media-range = ( "*/*"
/ ( type "/" "*" )
/ ( type "/" subtype )
) parameters

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

Each media-range might be followed by optional applicable media type

parameters (e.g., charset), followed by an optional "q" parameter for
indicating a relative weight (Section 12.4.2).

Previous specifications allowed additional extension parameters to

appear after the weight parameter. The accept extension grammar
(accept-params, accept-ext) has been removed because it had a
complicated definition, was not being used in practice, and is more easily
deployed through new header fields. Senders using weights SHOULD
send "q" last (after all media-range parameters). Recipients SHOULD
process any parameter named "q" as weight, regardless of parameter
ordering.

Note: Use of the "q" parameter name to control content negotiation

would interfere with any media type parameter having the same name.
Hence, the media type registry disallows parameters named "q".

The example

Accept: audio/*; q=0.2, audio/basic

is interpreted as "I prefer audio/basic, but send me any audio type if it is

the best available after an 80% markdown in quality".

A more elaborate example is

Accept: text/plain; q=0.5, text/html,

text/x-dvi; q=0.8, text/x-c

Verbally, this would be interpreted as "text/html and text/x-c are the

equally preferred media types, but if they do not exist, then send the
text/x-dvi representation, and if that does not exist, send the text/plain
representation".

Media ranges can be overridden by more specific media ranges or

specific media types. If more than one media range applies to a given
type, the most specific reference has precedence. For example,

Accept: text/*, text/plain, text/plain;format=flowed, */*

have the following precedence:

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

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

Accept: text/*;q=0.3, text/plain;q=0.7, text/plain;format=flowed,

text/plain;format=fixed;q=0.4, */*;q=0.5

would cause the following values to be associated:

Media Type Quality Value

text/plain;format=flowed 1
text/plain 0.7
text/html 0.3
image/jpeg 0.5
text/plain;format=fixed 0.4
text/html;level=3 0.7

Table 5

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

12.5.2. Accept-Charset
The "Accept-Charset" header field can be sent by a user agent to indicate
its preferences for charsets in textual response content. For example, this
field allows user agents capable of understanding more comprehensive
or special-purpose charsets to signal that capability to an origin server
that is capable of representing information in those charsets.

Accept-Charset = #( ( token / "*" ) [ weight ] )

Charset names are defined in Section 8.3.2. A user agent MAY associate a
quality value with each charset to indicate the user's relative preference
for that charset, as defined in Section 12.4.2. An example is

Accept-Charset: iso-8859-5, unicode-1-1;q=0.8

The special value "*", if present in the Accept-Charset header field,

matches every charset that is not mentioned elsewhere in the field.

Note: Accept-Charset is deprecated because UTF-8 has become nearly

ubiquitous and sending a detailed list of user-preferred charsets wastes
bandwidth, increases latency, and makes passive fingerprinting far too
easy (Section 17.13). Most general-purpose user agents do not send
Accept-Charset unless specifically configured to do so.

12.5.3. Accept-Encoding
The "Accept-Encoding" header field can be used to indicate preferences
regarding the use of content codings (Section 8.4.1).

When sent by a user agent in a request, Accept-Encoding indicates the

content codings acceptable in a response.

When sent by a server in a response, Accept-Encoding provides

information about which content codings are preferred in the content of
a subsequent request to the same resource.

An "identity" token is used as a synonym for "no encoding" in order to

communicate when no encoding is preferred.

Accept-Encoding = #( codings [ weight ] )

codings = content-coding / "identity" / "*"

Each codings value MAY be given an associated quality value (weight)

representing the preference for that encoding, as defined in Section
12.4.2. The asterisk "*" symbol in an Accept-Encoding field matches any
available content coding not explicitly listed in the field.

Examples:

Accept-Encoding: compress, gzip

Accept-Encoding:
Accept-Encoding: *
Accept-Encoding: compress;q=0.5, gzip;q=1.0
Accept-Encoding: gzip;q=1.0, identity; q=0.5, *;q=0

A server tests whether a content coding for a given representation is

acceptable using these rules:

1. If no Accept-Encoding header field is in the request, any content

coding is considered acceptable by the user agent.
2. If the representation has no content coding, then it is acceptable by
default unless specifically excluded by the Accept-Encoding header
field stating either "identity;q=0" or "*;q=0" without a more specific
entry for "identity".
3. If the representation's content coding is one of the content codings
listed in the Accept-Encoding field value, then it is acceptable unless
it is accompanied by a qvalue of 0. (As defined in Section 12.4.2, a
qvalue of 0 means "not acceptable".)

A representation could be encoded with multiple content codings.

However, most content codings are alternative ways to accomplish the
same purpose (e.g., data compression). When selecting between multiple
content codings that have the same purpose, the acceptable content
coding with the highest non-zero qvalue is preferred.

An Accept-Encoding header field with a field value that is empty implies

that the user agent does not want any content coding in response. If a
non-empty 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 unless the identity coding is
indicated as unacceptable.

When the Accept-Encoding header field is present in a response, it

indicates what content codings the resource was willing to accept in the
associated request. The field value is evaluated the same way as in a
request.
Note that this information is specific to the associated request; the set of
supported encodings might be different for other resources on the same
server and could change over time or depend on other aspects of the
request (such as the request method).

Servers that fail a request due to an unsupported content coding ought

to respond with a 415 (Unsupported Media Type) status and include an
Accept-Encoding header field in that response, allowing clients to
distinguish between issues related to content codings and media types.
In order to avoid confusion with issues related to media types, servers
that fail a request with a 415 status for reasons unrelated to content
codings MUST NOT include the Accept-Encoding header field.

The most common use of Accept-Encoding is in responses with a 415

(Unsupported Media Type) status code, in response to optimistic use of a
content coding by clients. However, the header field can also be used to
indicate to clients that content codings are supported in order to
optimize future interactions. For example, a resource might include it in a
2xx (Successful) response when the request content was big enough to
justify use of a compression coding but the client failed do so.

12.5.4. Accept-Language
The "Accept-Language" header field can be used by user agents to
indicate the set of natural languages that are preferred in the response.
Language tags are defined in Section 8.5.1.

Accept-Language = #( language-range [ weight ] )

language-range =
<language-range, see [RFC4647], Section 2.1>

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 12.4.2. For example,

Accept-Language: da, en-gb;q=0.8, en;q=0.7

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

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

For matching, Section 3 of [RFC4647] defines several matching schemes.

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

It might be contrary to the privacy expectations of the user to send an

Accept-Language header field with the complete linguistic preferences
of the user in every request (Section 17.13).

Since intelligibility is highly dependent on the individual user, user

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

Note: User agents ought to provide guidance to users when setting a

preference, since users are rarely familiar with the details of language
matching as described above. For example, users might assume that on
selecting "en-gb", they will be served any kind of English document if
British English is not available. A user agent might suggest, in such a
case, to add "en" to the list for better matching behavior.

12.5.5. Vary
The "Vary" header field in a response describes what parts of a request
message, aside from the method and target URI, might have influenced
the origin server's process for selecting the content of this response.

Vary = #( "*" / field-name )

A Vary field value is either the wildcard member "*" or a list of request
field names, known as the selecting header fields, that might have had a
role in selecting the representation for this response. Potential selecting
header fields are not limited to fields defined by this specification.

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

For example, a response that contains

Vary: accept-encoding, accept-language

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

A Vary field containing a list of field names has two purposes:

1. To inform cache recipients that they MUST NOT use this response to
satisfy a later request unless the later request has the same values
for the listed header fields as the original request (Section 4.1 of
[CACHING]) or reuse of the response has been validated by the
origin server. 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 was subject to

content negotiation (Section 12) and a different representation
might be sent in a subsequent request if other values are provided
in the listed header fields (proactive negotiation).

An origin server SHOULD generate a Vary header field on a cacheable

response when it wishes that response to be selectively reused for
subsequent requests. Generally, that is the case when the response
content has been tailored to better fit the preferences expressed by
those selecting header fields, such as when an origin server has selected
the response's language based on the request's Accept-Language
header field.

Vary might be elided when an origin server considers variance in content

selection to be less significant than Vary's performance impact on
caching, particularly when reuse is already limited by cache response
directives (Section 5.2 of [CACHING]).

There is no need to send the Authorization field name in Vary because

reuse of that response for a different user is prohibited by the field
definition (Section 11.6.2). Likewise, if the response content has been
selected or influenced by network region, but the origin server wants the
cached response to be reused even if recipients move from one region
to another, then there is no need for the origin server to indicate such
variance in Vary.

13. Conditional Requests

A conditional request is an HTTP request with one or more request
header fields that indicate a precondition to be tested before applying
the request method to the target resource. Section 13.2 defines when to
evaluate preconditions and their order of precedence when more than
one precondition is present.

Conditional GET requests are the most efficient mechanism for HTTP
cache updates [CACHING]. Conditionals can also be applied to state-
changing methods, such as PUT and DELETE, to prevent the "lost update"
problem: one client accidentally overwriting the work of another client
that has been acting in parallel.

13.1. Preconditions
Preconditions are usually defined with respect to a state of the target
resource as a whole (its current value set) or the state as observed in a
previously obtained representation (one value in that set). If a resource
has multiple current representations, each with its own observable state,
a precondition will assume that the mapping of each request to a
selected representation (Section 3.2) is consistent over time. Regardless,
if the mapping is inconsistent or the server is unable to select an
appropriate representation, then no harm will result when the
precondition evaluates to false.

Each precondition defined below consists of a comparison between a set

of validators obtained from prior representations of the target resource
to the current state of validators for the selected representation (Section
8.8). Hence, these preconditions evaluate whether the state of the target
resource has changed since a given state known by the client. The effect
of such an evaluation depends on the method semantics and choice of
conditional, as defined in Section 13.2.

Other preconditions, defined by other specifications as extension fields,

might place conditions on all recipients, on the state of the target
resource in general, or on a group of resources. For instance, the "If"
header field in WebDAV can make a request conditional on various
aspects of multiple resources, such as locks, if the recipient understands
and implements that field ([WEBDAV], Section 10.4).

Extensibility of preconditions is only possible when the precondition can

be safely ignored if unknown (like If-Modified-Since), when deployment
can be assumed for a given use case, or when implementation is
signaled by some other property of the target resource. This encourages
a focus on mutually agreed deployment of common standards.

13.1.1. If-Match
The "If-Match" header field makes the request method conditional on
the recipient origin server either having at least one current
representation of the target resource, when the field value is "*", or
having a current representation of the target resource that has an entity
tag matching a member of the list of entity tags provided in the field
value.

An origin server MUST use the strong comparison function when

comparing entity tags for If-Match (Section 8.8.3.2), since the client
intends this precondition to prevent the method from being applied if
there have been any changes to the representation data.

If-Match = "*" / #entity-tag

Examples:

If-Match: "xyzzy"
If-Match: "xyzzy", "r2d2xxxx", "c3piozzzz"
If-Match: *

If-Match is most often used with state-changing methods (e.g., POST,

PUT, DELETE) to prevent accidental overwrites when multiple user agents
might be acting in parallel on the same resource (i.e., to prevent the "lost
update" problem). In general, it can be used with any method that
involves the selection or modification of a representation to abort the
request if the selected representation's current entity tag is not a
member within the If-Match field value.

When an origin server receives a request that selects a representation

and that request includes an If-Match header field, the origin server
MUST evaluate the If-Match condition per Section 13.2 prior to
performing the method.

To evaluate a received If-Match header field:

1. If the field value is "*", the condition is true if the origin server has a
current representation for the target resource.
2. If the field value is a list of entity tags, the condition is true if any of
the listed tags match the entity tag of the selected representation.
3. Otherwise, the condition is false.

An origin server that evaluates an If-Match condition MUST NOT perform

the requested method if the condition evaluates to false. Instead, the
origin server MAY indicate that the conditional request failed by
responding with a 412 (Precondition Failed) status code. Alternatively, if
the request is a state-changing operation that appears to have already
been applied to the selected representation, the origin server MAY
respond with a 2xx (Successful) status code (i.e., the change requested by
the user agent has already succeeded, but the user agent might not be
aware of it, perhaps because the prior response was lost or an equivalent
change was made by some other user agent).

Allowing an origin server to send a success response when a change

request appears to have already been applied is more efficient for many
authoring use cases, but comes with some risk if multiple user agents are
making change requests that are very similar but not cooperative. For
example, multiple user agents writing to a common resource as a
semaphore (e.g., a nonatomic increment) are likely to collide and
potentially lose important state transitions. For those kinds of resources,
an origin server is better off being stringent in sending 412 for every
failed precondition on an unsafe method. In other cases, excluding the
ETag field from a success response might encourage the user agent to
perform a GET as its next request to eliminate confusion about the
resource's current state.

A client MAY send an If-Match header field in a GET request to indicate

that it would prefer a 412 (Precondition Failed) response if the selected
representation does not match. However, this is only useful in range
requests (Section 14) for completing a previously received partial
representation when there is no desire for a new representation. If-
Range (Section 13.1.5) is better suited for range requests when the client
prefers to receive a new representation.

A cache or intermediary MAY ignore If-Match because its interoperability

features are only necessary for an origin server.

Note that an If-Match header field with a list value containing "*" and
other values (including other instances of "*") is syntactically invalid
(therefore not allowed to be generated) and furthermore is unlikely to be
interoperable.

13.1.2. If-None-Match
The "If-None-Match" header field makes the request method conditional
on a recipient cache or origin server either not having any current
representation of the target resource, when the field value is "*", or
having a selected representation with an entity tag that does not match
any of those listed in the field value.

A recipient MUST use the weak comparison function when comparing

entity tags for If-None-Match (Section 8.8.3.2), since weak entity tags can
be used for cache validation even if there have been changes to the
representation data.

If-None-Match = "*" / #entity-tag

Examples:

If-None-Match: "xyzzy"
If-None-Match: W/"xyzzy"
If-None-Match: "xyzzy", "r2d2xxxx", "c3piozzzz"
If-None-Match: W/"xyzzy", W/"r2d2xxxx", W/"c3piozzzz"
If-None-Match: *

If-None-Match is primarily used in conditional GET requests to enable

efficient updates of cached information with a minimum amount of
transaction overhead. When a client desires to update one or more
stored responses that have entity tags, the client SHOULD generate an If-
None-Match header field containing a list of those entity tags when
making a GET request; this allows recipient servers to send a 304 (Not
Modified) response to indicate when one of those stored responses
matches the selected representation.

If-None-Match can also be used with a value of "*" to prevent an unsafe

request method (e.g., PUT) from inadvertently modifying an existing
representation of the target resource when the client believes that the
resource does not have a current representation (Section 9.2.1). This is a
variation on the "lost update" problem that might arise if more than one
client attempts to create an initial representation for the target resource.

When an origin server receives a request that selects a representation

and that request includes an If-None-Match header field, the origin
server MUST evaluate the If-None-Match condition per Section 13.2 prior
to performing the method.

To evaluate a received If-None-Match header field:

1. If the field value is "*", the condition is false if the origin server has a
current representation for the target resource.
2. If the field value is a list of entity tags, the condition is false if one of
the listed tags matches the entity tag of the selected representation.
3. Otherwise, the condition is true.

An origin server that evaluates an If-None-Match condition MUST NOT

perform the requested method if the condition evaluates to false;
instead, the origin server MUST respond with either a) the 304 (Not
Modified) status code if the request method is GET or HEAD or b) the
412 (Precondition Failed) status code for all other request methods.

Requirements on cache handling of a received If-None-Match header

field are defined in Section 4.3.2 of [CACHING].

Note that an If-None-Match header field with a list value containing "*"
and other values (including other instances of "*") is syntactically invalid
(therefore not allowed to be generated) and furthermore is unlikely to be
interoperable.

13.1.3. If-Modified-Since
The "If-Modified-Since" header field makes a GET or HEAD request
method conditional on the selected representation's modification date
being more recent than the date provided in the field value. Transfer of
the selected representation's data is avoided if that data has not
changed.

If-Modified-Since = HTTP-date
An example of the field is:

If-Modified-Since: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 19:43:31 GMT

A recipient MUST ignore If-Modified-Since if the request contains an If-

None-Match header field; the condition in If-None-Match is considered
to be a more accurate replacement for the condition in If-Modified-
Since, and the two are only combined for the sake of interoperating with
older intermediaries that might not implement If-None-Match.

A recipient MUST ignore the If-Modified-Since header field if the

received field value is not a valid HTTP-date, the field value has more
than one member, or if the request method is neither GET nor HEAD.

A recipient MUST ignore the If-Modified-Since header field if the

resource does not have a modification date available.

A recipient MUST interpret an If-Modified-Since field value's timestamp

in terms of the origin server's clock.

If-Modified-Since is typically used for two distinct purposes: 1) to allow

efficient updates of a cached representation that does not have an entity
tag and 2) to limit the scope of a web traversal to resources that have
recently changed.

When used for cache updates, a cache will typically use the value of the
cached message's Last-Modified header field to generate the field value
of If-Modified-Since. This behavior is most interoperable for cases where
clocks are poorly synchronized or when the server has chosen to only
honor exact timestamp matches (due to a problem with Last-Modified
dates that appear to go "back in time" when the origin server's clock is
corrected or a representation is restored from an archived backup).
However, caches occasionally generate the field value based on other
data, such as the Date header field of the cached message or the clock
time at which the message was received, particularly when the cached
message does not contain a Last-Modified header field.

When used for limiting the scope of retrieval to a recent time window, a
user agent will generate an If-Modified-Since field value based on either
its own clock or a Date header field received from the server in a prior
response. Origin servers that choose an exact timestamp match based on
the selected representation's Last-Modified header field will not be able
to help the user agent limit its data transfers to only those changed
during the specified window.

When an origin server receives a request that selects a representation

and that request includes an If-Modified-Since header field without an If-
None-Match header field, the origin server SHOULD evaluate the If-
Modified-Since condition per Section 13.2 prior to performing the
method.

To evaluate a received If-Modified-Since header field:

1. If the selected representation's last modification date is earlier or

equal to the date provided in the field value, the condition is false.
2. Otherwise, the condition is true.

An origin server that evaluates an If-Modified-Since condition SHOULD

NOT perform the requested method if the condition evaluates to false;
instead, the origin server SHOULD generate a 304 (Not Modified)
response, including only those metadata that are useful for identifying or
updating a previously cached response.

Requirements on cache handling of a received If-Modified-Since header

field are defined in Section 4.3.2 of [CACHING].

13.1.4. If-Unmodified-Since
The "If-Unmodified-Since" header field makes the request method
conditional on the selected representation's last modification date being
earlier than or equal to the date provided in the field value. This field
accomplishes the same purpose as If-Match for cases where the user
agent does not have an entity tag for the representation.

If-Unmodified-Since = HTTP-date

An example of the field is:

If-Unmodified-Since: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 19:43:31 GMT

A recipient MUST ignore If-Unmodified-Since if the request contains an

If-Match header field; the condition in If-Match is considered to be a
more accurate replacement for the condition in If-Unmodified-Since, and
the two are only combined for the sake of interoperating with older
intermediaries that might not implement If-Match.
A recipient MUST ignore the If-Unmodified-Since header field if the
received field value is not a valid HTTP-date (including when the field
value appears to be a list of dates).

A recipient MUST ignore the If-Unmodified-Since header field if the

resource does not have a modification date available.

A recipient MUST interpret an If-Unmodified-Since field value's

timestamp in terms of the origin server's clock.

If-Unmodified-Since is most often used with state-changing methods

(e.g., POST, PUT, DELETE) to prevent accidental overwrites when multiple
user agents might be acting in parallel on a resource that does not
supply entity tags with its representations (i.e., to prevent the "lost
update" problem). In general, it can be used with any method that
involves the selection or modification of a representation to abort the
request if the selected representation's last modification date has
changed since the date provided in the If-Unmodified-Since field value.

When an origin server receives a request that selects a representation

and that request includes an If-Unmodified-Since header field without an
If-Match header field, the origin server MUST evaluate the If-
Unmodified-Since condition per Section 13.2 prior to performing the
method.

To evaluate a received If-Unmodified-Since header field:

1. If the selected representation's last modification date is earlier than

or equal to the date provided in the field value, the condition is true.
2. Otherwise, the condition is false.

An origin server that evaluates an If-Unmodified-Since condition MUST

NOT perform the requested method if the condition evaluates to false.
Instead, the origin server MAY indicate that the conditional request failed
by responding with a 412 (Precondition Failed) status code. Alternatively,
if the request is a state-changing operation that appears to have already
been applied to the selected representation, the origin server MAY
respond with a 2xx (Successful) status code (i.e., the change requested by
the user agent has already succeeded, but the user agent might not be
aware of it, perhaps because the prior response was lost or an equivalent
change was made by some other user agent).
Allowing an origin server to send a success response when a change
request appears to have already been applied is more efficient for many
authoring use cases, but comes with some risk if multiple user agents are
making change requests that are very similar but not cooperative. In
those cases, an origin server is better off being stringent in sending 412
for every failed precondition on an unsafe method.

A client MAY send an If-Unmodified-Since header field in a GET request

to indicate that it would prefer a 412 (Precondition Failed) response if the
selected representation has been modified. However, this is only useful
in range requests (Section 14) for completing a previously received
partial representation when there is no desire for a new representation.
If-Range (Section 13.1.5) is better suited for range requests when the
client prefers to receive a new representation.

A cache or intermediary MAY ignore If-Unmodified-Since because its

interoperability features are only necessary for an origin server.

13.1.5. If-Range
The "If-Range" header field provides a special conditional request
mechanism that is similar to the If-Match and If-Unmodified-Since
header fields but that instructs the recipient to ignore the Range header
field if the validator doesn't match, resulting in transfer of the new
selected representation instead of a 412 (Precondition Failed) response.

If a client has a partial copy of a representation and wishes to have an

up-to-date copy of the entire representation, it could use the Range
header field with a conditional GET (using either or both of If-
Unmodified-Since and If-Match.) However, if the precondition fails
because the representation has been modified, the client would then
have to make a second request to obtain the entire current
representation.

The "If-Range" header field allows a client to "short-circuit" the second

request. Informally, its meaning is as follows: if the representation is
unchanged, send me the part(s) that I am requesting in Range;
otherwise, send me the entire representation.

If-Range = entity-tag / HTTP-date

A valid entity-tag can be distinguished from a valid HTTP-date by

examining the first three characters for a DQUOTE.

A client MUST NOT generate an If-Range header field in a request that

does not contain a Range header field. A server MUST ignore an If-Range
header field received in a request that does not contain a Range header
field. An origin server MUST ignore an If-Range header field received in a
request for a target resource that does not support Range requests.

A client MUST NOT generate an If-Range header field containing an

entity tag that is marked as weak. A client MUST NOT generate an If-
Range header field containing an HTTP-date unless the client has no
entity tag for the corresponding representation and the date is a strong
validator in the sense defined by Section 8.8.2.2.

A server that receives an If-Range header field on a Range request MUST

evaluate the condition per Section 13.2 prior to performing the method.

To evaluate a received If-Range header field containing an HTTP-date:

1. If the HTTP-date validator provided is not a strong validator in the

sense defined by Section 8.8.2.2, the condition is false.
2. If the HTTP-date validator provided exactly matches the Last-
Modified field value for the selected representation, the condition is
true.
3. Otherwise, the condition is false.

To evaluate a received If-Range header field containing an entity-tag:

1. If the entity-tag validator provided exactly matches the ETag field

value for the selected representation using the strong comparison
function (Section 8.8.3.2), the condition is true.
2. Otherwise, the condition is false.

A recipient of an If-Range header field MUST ignore the Range header

field if the If-Range condition evaluates to false. Otherwise, the recipient
SHOULD process the Range header field as requested.

Note that the If-Range comparison is by exact match, including when the
validator is an HTTP-date, and so it differs from the "earlier than or equal
to" comparison used when evaluating an If-Unmodified-Since
conditional.

13.2. Evaluation of Preconditions

13.2.1. When to Evaluate
Except when excluded below, a recipient cache or origin server MUST
evaluate received request preconditions after it has successfully
performed its normal request checks and just before it would process the
request content (if any) or perform the action associated with the
request method. A server MUST ignore all received preconditions if its
response to the same request without those conditions, prior to
processing the request content, would have been a status code other
than a 2xx (Successful) or 412 (Precondition Failed). In other words,
redirects and failures that can be detected before significant processing
occurs take precedence over the evaluation of preconditions.

A server that is not the origin server for the target resource and cannot
act as a cache for requests on the target resource MUST NOT evaluate
the conditional request header fields defined by this specification, and it
MUST forward them if the request is forwarded, since the generating
client intends that they be evaluated by a server that can provide a
current representation. Likewise, a server MUST ignore the conditional
request header fields defined by this specification when received with a
request method that does not involve the selection or modification of a
selected representation, such as CONNECT, OPTIONS, or TRACE.

Note that protocol extensions can modify the conditions under which
preconditions are evaluated or the consequences of their evaluation. For
example, the immutable cache directive (defined by [RFC8246]) instructs
caches to forgo forwarding conditional requests when they hold a fresh
response.

Although conditional request header fields are defined as being usable

with the HEAD method (to keep HEAD's semantics consistent with those
of GET), there is no point in sending a conditional HEAD because a
successful response is around the same size as a 304 (Not Modified)
response and more useful than a 412 (Precondition Failed) response.

13.2.2. Precedence of Preconditions

When more than one conditional request header field is present in a
request, the order in which the fields are evaluated becomes important.
In practice, the fields defined in this document are consistently
implemented in a single, logical order, since "lost update" preconditions
have more strict requirements than cache validation, a validated cache is
more efficient than a partial response, and entity tags are presumed to
be more accurate than date validators.

A recipient cache or origin server MUST evaluate the request

preconditions defined by this specification in the following order:

1. When recipient is the origin server and If-Match is present, evaluate

the If-Match precondition:

◦ if true, continue to step 3

◦ if false, respond 412 (Precondition Failed) unless it can be
determined that the state-changing request has already
succeeded (see Section 13.1.1)
2. When recipient is the origin server, If-Match is not present, and If-
Unmodified-Since is present, evaluate the If-Unmodified-Since
precondition:

◦ if true, continue to step 3

◦ if false, respond 412 (Precondition Failed) unless it can be
determined that the state-changing request has already
succeeded (see Section 13.1.4)
3. When If-None-Match is present, evaluate the If-None-Match
precondition:

◦ if true, continue to step 5

◦ if false for GET/HEAD, respond 304 (Not Modified)
◦ if false for other methods, respond 412 (Precondition Failed)
4. When the method is GET or HEAD, If-None-Match is not present,
and If-Modified-Since is present, evaluate the If-Modified-Since
precondition:

◦ if true, continue to step 5

◦ if false, respond 304 (Not Modified)
5. When the method is GET and both Range and If-Range are present,
evaluate the If-Range precondition:

◦ if true and the Range is applicable to the selected

representation, respond 206 (Partial Content)
◦ otherwise, ignore the Range header field and respond 200 (OK)
6. Otherwise,

◦ perform the requested method and respond according to its

 success or failure.

Any extension to HTTP that defines additional conditional request

header fields ought to define the order for evaluating such fields in
relation to those defined in this document and other conditionals that
might be found in practice.

14. Range Requests

Clients often encounter interrupted data transfers as a result of canceled
requests or dropped connections. When a client has stored a partial
representation, it is desirable to request the remainder of that
representation in a subsequent request rather than transfer the entire
representation. Likewise, devices with limited local storage might benefit
from being able to request only a subset of a larger representation, such
as a single page of a very large document, or the dimensions of an
embedded image.

Range requests are an OPTIONAL feature of HTTP, designed so that

recipients not implementing this feature (or not supporting it for the
target resource) can respond as if it is a normal GET request without
impacting interoperability. Partial responses are indicated by a distinct
status code to not be mistaken for full responses by caches that might
not implement the feature.

14.1. Range Units

Representation data can be partitioned into subranges when there are
addressable structural units inherent to that data's content coding or
media type. For example, octet (a.k.a. byte) boundaries are a structural
unit common to all representation data, allowing partitions of the data to
be identified as a range of bytes at some offset from the start or end of
that data.

This general notion of a range unit is used in the Accept-Ranges (Section

14.3) response header field to advertise support for range requests, the
Range (Section 14.2) request header field to delineate the parts of a
representation that are requested, and the Content-Range (Section 14.4)
header field to describe which part of a representation is being
transferred.

range-unit = token
All range unit names are case-insensitive and ought to be registered
within the "HTTP Range Unit Registry", as defined in Section 16.5.1.

Range units are intended to be extensible, as described in Section 16.5.

14.1.1. Range Specifiers

Ranges are expressed in terms of a range unit paired with a set of range
specifiers. The range unit name determines what kinds of range-spec are
applicable to its own specifiers. Hence, the following grammar is generic:
each range unit is expected to specify requirements on when int-range,
suffix-range, and other-range are allowed.

A range request can specify a single range or a set of ranges within a

single representation.

ranges-specifier = range-unit "=" range-set

range-set = 1#range-spec
range-spec = int-range
/ suffix-range
/ other-range

An int-range is a range expressed as two non-negative integers or as one

non-negative integer through to the end of the representation data. The
range unit specifies what the integers mean (e.g., they might indicate
unit offsets from the beginning, inclusive numbered parts, etc.).

int-range = first-pos "-" [ last-pos ]

first-pos = 1*DIGIT
last-pos = 1*DIGIT

An int-range is invalid if the last-pos value is present and less than the
first-pos.

A suffix-range is a range expressed as a suffix of the representation data

with the provided non-negative integer maximum length (in range units).
In other words, the last N units of the representation data.

suffix-range = "-" suffix-length

suffix-length = 1*DIGIT

To provide for extensibility, the other-range rule is a mostly

unconstrained grammar that allows application-specific or future range
units to define additional range specifiers.
 other-range = 1*( %x21-2B / %x2D-7E )
; 1*(VCHAR excluding comma)

A ranges-specifier is invalid if it contains any range-spec that is invalid or

undefined for the indicated range-unit.

A valid ranges-specifier is satisfiable if it contains at least one range-spec

that is satisfiable, as defined by the indicated range-unit. Otherwise, the
ranges-specifier is unsatisfiable.

14.1.2. Byte Ranges

The "bytes" range unit is used to express subranges of a representation
data's octet sequence. Each byte range is expressed as an integer range
at some offset, relative to either the beginning (int-range) or end (suffix-
range) of the representation data. Byte ranges do not use the other-
range specifier.

The first-pos value in a bytes int-range gives the offset of the first byte in
a range. The last-pos value gives the offset of the last byte in the range;
that is, the byte positions specified are inclusive. Byte offsets start at
zero.

If the representation data has a content coding applied, each byte range
is calculated with respect to the encoded sequence of bytes, not the
sequence of underlying bytes that would be obtained after decoding.

Examples of bytes range specifiers:

• The first 500 bytes (byte offsets 0-499, inclusive):

bytes=0-499

• The second 500 bytes (byte offsets 500-999, inclusive):

bytes=500-999

A client can limit the number of bytes requested without knowing the
size of the selected representation. If the last-pos value is absent, or if
the value is greater than or equal to the current length of the
representation data, the byte range is interpreted as the remainder of
the representation (i.e., the server replaces the value of last-pos with a
value that is one less than the current length of the selected
representation).
A client can refer to the last N bytes (N > 0) of the selected
representation using a suffix-range. If the selected representation is
shorter than the specified suffix-length, the entire representation is used.

Additional examples, assuming a representation of length 10000:

• The final 500 bytes (byte offsets 9500-9999, inclusive):

bytes=-500

Or:

bytes=9500-

• The first and last bytes only (bytes 0 and 9999):

bytes=0-0,-1

• The first, middle, and last 1000 bytes:

bytes= 0-999, 4500-5499, -1000

• Other valid (but not canonical) specifications of the second 500

bytes (byte offsets 500-999, inclusive):

bytes=500-600,601-999
bytes=500-700,601-999

For a GET request, a valid bytes range-spec is satisfiable if it is either:

• an int-range with a first-pos that is less than the current length of

the selected representation or
• a suffix-range with a non-zero suffix-length.

When a selected representation has zero length, the only satisfiable form
of range-spec in a GET request is a suffix-range with a non-zero suffix-
length.

In the byte-range syntax, first-pos, last-pos, and suffix-length are

expressed as decimal number of octets. Since there is no predefined limit
to the length of content, recipients MUST anticipate potentially large
decimal numerals and prevent parsing errors due to integer conversion
overflows.

14.2. Range
The "Range" header field on a GET request modifies the method
semantics to request transfer of only one or more subranges of the
selected representation data (Section 8.1), rather than the entire selected
representation.

Range = ranges-specifier

A server MAY ignore the Range header field. However, origin servers and
intermediate caches ought to support byte ranges when possible, since
they support efficient recovery from partially failed transfers and partial
retrieval of large representations.

A server MUST ignore a Range header field received with a request

method that is unrecognized or for which range handling is not defined.
For this specification, GET is the only method for which range handling is
defined.

An origin server MUST ignore a Range header field that contains a range
unit it does not understand. A proxy MAY discard a Range header field
that contains a range unit it does not understand.

A server that supports range requests MAY ignore or reject a Range

header field that contains an invalid ranges-specifier (Section 14.1.1), a
ranges-specifier with more than two overlapping ranges, or a set of
many small ranges that are not listed in ascending order, since these are
indications of either a broken client or a deliberate denial-of-service
attack (Section 17.15). A client SHOULD NOT request multiple ranges
that are inherently less efficient to process and transfer than a single
range that encompasses the same data.

A server that supports range requests MAY ignore a Range header field
when the selected representation has no content (i.e., the selected
representation's data is of zero length).

A client that is requesting multiple ranges SHOULD list those ranges in

ascending order (the order in which they would typically be received in a
complete representation) unless there is a specific need to request a later
part earlier. For example, a user agent processing a large representation
with an internal catalog of parts might need to request later parts first,
particularly if the representation consists of pages stored in reverse order
and the user agent wishes to transfer one page at a time.
The Range header field is evaluated after evaluating the precondition
header fields defined in Section 13.1, and only if the result in absence of
the Range header field would be a 200 (OK) response. In other words,
Range is ignored when a conditional GET would result in a 304 (Not
Modified) response.

The If-Range header field (Section 13.1.5) can be used as a precondition

to applying the Range header field.

If all of the preconditions are true, the server supports the Range header
field for the target resource, the received Range field-value contains a
valid ranges-specifier with a range-unit supported for that target
resource, and that ranges-specifier is satisfiable with respect to the
selected representation, the server SHOULD send a 206 (Partial Content)
response with content containing one or more partial representations
that correspond to the satisfiable range-spec(s) requested.

The above does not imply that a server will send all requested ranges. In
some cases, it may only be possible (or efficient) to send a portion of the
requested ranges first, while expecting the client to re-request the
remaining portions later if they are still desired (see Section 15.3.7).

If all of the preconditions are true, the server supports the Range header
field for the target resource, the received Range field-value contains a
valid ranges-specifier, and either the range-unit is not supported for that
target resource or the ranges-specifier is unsatisfiable with respect to the
selected representation, the server SHOULD send a 416 (Range Not
Satisfiable) response.

14.3. Accept-Ranges
The "Accept-Ranges" field in a response indicates whether an upstream
server supports range requests for the target resource.

Accept-Ranges = acceptable-ranges
acceptable-ranges = 1#range-unit

For example, a server that supports byte-range requests (Section 14.1.2)

can send the field

Accept-Ranges: bytes

to indicate that it supports byte range requests for that target resource,
thereby encouraging its use by the client for future partial requests on
the same request path. Range units are defined in Section 14.1.

A client MAY generate range requests regardless of having received an

Accept-Ranges field. The information only provides advice for the sake of
improving performance and reducing unnecessary network transfers.

Conversely, a client MUST NOT assume that receiving an Accept-Ranges

field means that future range requests will return partial responses. The
content might change, the server might only support range requests at
certain times or under certain conditions, or a different intermediary
might process the next request.

A server that does not support any kind of range request for the target
resource MAY send

Accept-Ranges: none

to advise the client not to attempt a range request on the same request
path. The range unit "none" is reserved for this purpose.

The Accept-Ranges field MAY be sent in a trailer section, but is preferred

to be sent as a header field because the information is particularly useful
for restarting large information transfers that have failed in mid-content
(before the trailer section is received).

14.4. Content-Range
The "Content-Range" header field is sent in a single part 206 (Partial
Content) response to indicate the partial range of the selected
representation enclosed as the message content, sent in each part of a
multipart 206 response to indicate the range enclosed within each body
part (Section 14.6), and sent in 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) responses to
provide information about the selected representation.

Content-Range = range-unit SP
( range-resp / unsatisfied-range )

range-resp = incl-range "/" ( complete-length / "*" )

incl-range = first-pos "-" last-pos
unsatisfied-range = "*/" complete-length

complete-length = 1*DIGIT
If a 206 (Partial Content) response contains a Content-Range header field
with a range unit (Section 14.1) that the recipient does not understand,
the recipient MUST NOT attempt to recombine it with a stored
representation. A proxy that receives such a message SHOULD forward it
downstream.

Content-Range might also be sent as a request modifier to request a

partial PUT, as described in Section 14.5, based on private agreements
between client and origin server. A server MUST ignore a Content-Range
header field received in a request with a method for which Content-
Range support is not defined.

For byte ranges, a sender SHOULD indicate the complete length of the
representation from which the range has been extracted, unless the
complete length is unknown or difficult to determine. An asterisk
character ("*") in place of the complete-length indicates that the
representation length was unknown when the header field was
generated.

The following example illustrates when the complete length of the

selected representation is known by the sender to be 1234 bytes:

Content-Range: bytes 42-1233/1234

and this second example illustrates when the complete length is

unknown:

Content-Range: bytes 42-1233/*

A Content-Range field value is invalid if it contains a range-resp that has

a last-pos value less than its first-pos value, or a complete-length value
less than or equal to its last-pos value. The recipient of an invalid
Content-Range MUST NOT attempt to recombine the received content
with a stored representation.

A server generating a 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) response to a byte-

range request SHOULD send a Content-Range header field with an
unsatisfied-range value, as in the following example:

Content-Range: bytes */1234

The complete-length in a 416 response indicates the current length of

the selected representation.
The Content-Range header field has no meaning for status codes that do
not explicitly describe its semantic. For this specification, only the 206
(Partial Content) and 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) status codes describe a
meaning for Content-Range.

The following are examples of Content-Range values in which the

selected representation contains a total of 1234 bytes:

• The first 500 bytes:

Content-Range: bytes 0-499/1234

• The second 500 bytes:

Content-Range: bytes 500-999/1234

• All except for the first 500 bytes:

Content-Range: bytes 500-1233/1234

• The last 500 bytes:

Content-Range: bytes 734-1233/1234

14.5. Partial PUT

Some origin servers support PUT of a partial representation when the
user agent sends a Content-Range header field (Section 14.4) in the
request, though such support is inconsistent and depends on private
agreements with user agents. In general, it requests that the state of the
target resource be partly replaced with the enclosed content at an offset
and length indicated by the Content-Range value, where the offset is
relative to the current selected representation.

An origin server SHOULD respond with a 400 (Bad Request) status code
if it receives Content-Range on a PUT for a target resource that does not
support partial PUT requests.

Partial PUT is not backwards compatible with the original definition of

PUT. It may result in the content being written as a complete
replacement for the current representation.

Partial resource updates are also possible by targeting a separately

identified resource with state that overlaps or extends a portion of the
larger resource, or by using a different method that has been specifically
defined for partial updates (for example, the PATCH method defined in
[RFC5789]).

14.6. Media Type multipart/byteranges

When a 206 (Partial Content) response message includes the content of
multiple ranges, they are transmitted as body parts in a multipart
message body ([RFC2046], Section 5.1) with the media type of
"multipart/byteranges".

The "multipart/byteranges" media type includes one or more body parts,

each with its own Content-Type and Content-Range fields. The required
boundary parameter specifies the boundary string used to separate each
body part.

Implementation Notes:

1. Additional CRLFs might precede the first boundary string in the

body.
2. Although [RFC2046] permits the boundary string to be quoted,
some existing implementations handle a quoted boundary string
incorrectly.
3. A number of clients and servers were coded to an early draft of the
byteranges specification that used a media type of "multipart/x-
byteranges", which is almost (but not quite) compatible with this
type.

Despite the name, the "multipart/byteranges" media type is not limited

to byte ranges. The following example uses an "exampleunit" range unit:

HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content

Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 14 July 04:58:08 GMT
Content-Length: 2331785
Content-Type: multipart/byteranges; boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES

--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: video/example
Content-Range: exampleunit 1.2-4.3/25

...the first range...

--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: video/example
Content-Range: exampleunit 11.2-14.3/25
...the second range
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES--

The following information serves as the registration form for the

"multipart/byteranges" media type.

Type name: multipart

Subtype name: byteranges

Required parameters: boundary

Optional parameters: N/A

Encoding considerations: only "7bit", "8bit", or "binary" are

permitted

Security considerations: see Section 17

Interoperability considerations: N/A

Published specification: RFC 9110 (see Section 14.6)

Applications that use this media type: HTTP components

supporting multiple ranges in a single request

Fragment identifier considerations: N/A

Additional information: Deprecated alias names for this type:

N/A

Magic number(s): N/A

File extension(s): N/A

Macintosh file type code(s): N/A

Person and email address to contact for further information: See

Authors' Addresses section.

Intended usage: COMMON

Restrictions on usage: N/A

Author: See Authors' Addresses section.

Change controller: IESG

15. Status Codes

The status code of a response is a three-digit integer code that describes
the result of the request and the semantics of the response, including
whether the request was successful and what content is enclosed (if any).
All valid status codes are within the range of 100 to 599, inclusive.

The first digit of the status code defines the class of response. The last
two digits do not have any categorization role. There are five values for
the first digit:

• 1xx (Informational): The request was received, continuing process

• 2xx (Successful): The request was successfully received, understood,
and accepted
• 3xx (Redirection): Further action needs to be taken in order to
complete the request
• 4xx (Client Error): The request contains bad syntax or cannot be
fulfilled
• 5xx (Server Error): The server failed to fulfill an apparently valid
request

HTTP status codes are extensible. A client is not required to understand

the meaning of all registered status codes, though such understanding is
obviously desirable. However, a client MUST understand the class of any
status code, as indicated by the first digit, and treat an unrecognized
status code as being equivalent to the x00 status code of that class.

For example, if a client receives an unrecognized status code of 471, it

can see from the first digit that there was something wrong with its
request and treat the response as if it had received a 400 (Bad Request)
status code. The response message will usually contain a representation
that explains the status.

Values outside the range 100..599 are invalid. Implementations often use
three-digit integer values outside of that range (i.e., 600..999) for internal
communication of non-HTTP status (e.g., library errors). A client that
receives a response with an invalid status code SHOULD process the
response as if it had a 5xx (Server Error) status code.

A single request can have multiple associated responses: zero or more

interim (non-final) responses with status codes in the "informational"
(1xx) range, followed by exactly one final response with a status code in
one of the other ranges.

15.1. Overview of Status Codes

The status codes listed below are defined in this specification. The reason
phrases listed here are only recommendations — they can be replaced
by local equivalents or left out altogether without affecting the protocol.

Responses with status codes that are defined as heuristically cacheable

(e.g., 200, 203, 204, 206, 300, 301, 308, 404, 405, 410, 414, and 501 in this
specification) can be reused by a cache with heuristic expiration unless
otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls
[CACHING]; all other status codes are not heuristically cacheable.

Additional status codes, outside the scope of this specification, have

been specified for use in HTTP. All such status codes ought to be
registered within the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code
Registry", as described in Section 16.2.

15.2. Informational 1xx

The 1xx (Informational) class of status code indicates an interim response
for communicating connection status or request progress prior to
completing the requested action and sending a final response. Since
HTTP/1.0 did not define any 1xx status codes, a server MUST NOT send a
1xx response to an HTTP/1.0 client.

A 1xx response is terminated by the end of the header section; it cannot

contain content or trailers.

A client MUST be able to parse one or more 1xx responses received prior
to a final response, even if the client does not expect one. A user agent
MAY ignore unexpected 1xx responses.

A proxy MUST forward 1xx responses unless the proxy itself requested
the generation of the 1xx response. For example, if a proxy adds an
"Expect: 100-continue" header field when it forwards a request, then it
need not forward the corresponding 100 (Continue) response(s).

15.2.1. 100 Continue

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

When the request contains an Expect header field that includes a 100-
continue expectation, the 100 response indicates that the server wishes
to receive the request content, as described in Section 10.1.1. The client
ought to continue sending the request and discard the 100 response.

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

15.2.2. 101 Switching Protocols

The 101 (Switching Protocols) status code indicates that the server
understands and is willing to comply with the client's request, via the
Upgrade header field (Section 7.8), for a change in the application
protocol being used on this connection. The server MUST generate an
Upgrade header field in the response that indicates which protocol(s) will
be in effect after this response.

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

15.3. Successful 2xx

The 2xx (Successful) class of status code indicates that the client's
request was successfully received, understood, and accepted.

15.3.1. 200 OK
The 200 (OK) status code indicates that the request has succeeded. The
content sent in a 200 response depends on the request method. For the
methods defined by this specification, the intended meaning of the
content can be summarized as:

Request
Response content is a representation of:
Method
GET the target resource
the target resource, like GET, but without
HEAD
transferring the representation data
POST the status of, or results obtained from, the action

Table 6
Request
Response content is a representation of:
Method
PUT,
the status of the action
DELETE
OPTIONS communication options for the target resource
the request message as received by the server
TRACE
returning the trace

Aside from responses to CONNECT, a 200 response is expected to

contain message content unless the message framing explicitly indicates
that the content has zero length. If some aspect of the request indicates
a preference for no content upon success, the origin server ought to
send a 204 (No Content) response instead. For CONNECT, there is no
content because the successful result is a tunnel, which begins
immediately after the 200 response header section.

A 200 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

In 200 responses to GET or HEAD, an origin server SHOULD send any

available validator fields (Section 8.8) for the selected representation,
with both a strong entity tag and a Last-Modified date being preferred.

In 200 responses to state-changing methods, any validator fields

(Section 8.8) sent in the response convey the current validators for the
new representation formed as a result of successfully applying the
request semantics. Note that the PUT method (Section 9.3.4) has
additional requirements that might preclude sending such validators.

15.3.2. 201 Created

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

The 201 response content typically describes and links to the resource(s)
created. Any validator fields (Section 8.8) sent in the response convey the
current validators for a new representation created by the request. Note
that the PUT method (Section 9.3.4) has additional requirements that
might preclude sending such validators.

15.3.3. 202 Accepted

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

The 202 response is intentionally noncommittal. Its purpose is to allow a

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

15.3.4. 203 Non-Authoritative Information

The 203 (Non-Authoritative Information) status code indicates that the
request was successful but the enclosed content has been modified from
that of the origin server's 200 (OK) response by a transforming proxy
(Section 7.7). This status code allows the proxy to notify recipients when
a transformation has been applied, since that knowledge might impact
later decisions regarding the content. For example, future cache
validation requests for the content might only be applicable along the
same request path (through the same proxies).

A 203 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.3.5. 204 No Content

The 204 (No Content) status code indicates that the server has
successfully fulfilled the request and that there is no additional content
to send in the response content. Metadata in the response header fields
refer to the target resource and its selected representation after the
requested action was applied.
For example, if a 204 status code is received in response to a PUT
request and the response contains an ETag field, then the PUT was
successful and the ETag field value contains the entity tag for the new
representation of that target resource.

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

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

A 204 response is terminated by the end of the header section; it cannot

contain content or trailers.

A 204 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.3.6. 205 Reset Content

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

This response is intended to support a common data entry use case

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

Since the 205 status code implies that no additional content will be
provided, a server MUST NOT generate content in a 205 response.
15.3.7. 206 Partial Content
The 206 (Partial Content) status code indicates that the server is
successfully fulfilling a range request for the target resource by
transferring one or more parts of the selected representation.

A server that supports range requests (Section 14) will usually attempt to
satisfy all of the requested ranges, since sending less data will likely
result in another client request for the remainder. However, a server
might want to send only a subset of the data requested for reasons of its
own, such as temporary unavailability, cache efficiency, load balancing,
etc. Since a 206 response is self-descriptive, the client can still
understand a response that only partially satisfies its range request.

A client MUST inspect a 206 response's Content-Type and Content-

Range field(s) to determine what parts are enclosed and whether
additional requests are needed.

A server that generates a 206 response MUST generate the following

header fields, in addition to those required in the subsections below, if
the field would have been sent in a 200 (OK) response to the same
request: Date, Cache-Control, ETag, Expires, Content-Location, and Vary.

A Content-Length header field present in a 206 response indicates the

number of octets in the content of this message, which is usually not the
complete length of the selected representation. Each Content-Range
header field includes information about the selected representation's
complete length.

A sender that generates a 206 response to a request with an If-Range

header field SHOULD NOT generate other representation header fields
beyond those required because the client already has a prior response
containing those header fields. Otherwise, a sender MUST generate all of
the representation header fields that would have been sent in a 200 (OK)
response to the same request.

A 206 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [CACHING]).

15.3.7.1. Single Part

If a single part is being transferred, the server generating the 206
response MUST generate a Content-Range header field, describing what
range of the selected representation is enclosed, and a content
consisting of the range. For example:

HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content

Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT
Content-Range: bytes 21010-47021/47022
Content-Length: 26012
Content-Type: image/gif

... 26012 bytes of partial image data ...

15.3.7.2. Multiple Parts

If multiple parts are being transferred, the server generating the 206
response MUST generate "multipart/byteranges" content, as defined in
Section 14.6, and a Content-Type header field containing the "multipart/
byteranges" media type and its required boundary parameter. To avoid
confusion with single-part responses, a server MUST NOT generate a
Content-Range header field in the HTTP header section of a multiple
part response (this field will be sent in each part instead).

Within the header area of each body part in the multipart content, the
server MUST generate a Content-Range header field corresponding to
the range being enclosed in that body part. If the selected
representation would have had a Content-Type header field in a 200 (OK)
response, the server SHOULD generate that same Content-Type header
field in the header area of each body part. For example:

HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content

Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT
Content-Length: 1741
Content-Type: multipart/byteranges; boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES

--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Range: bytes 500-999/8000

...the first range...

--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Range: bytes 7000-7999/8000

...the second range

--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES--

When multiple ranges are requested, a server MAY coalesce any of the
ranges that overlap, or that are separated by a gap that is smaller than
the overhead of sending multiple parts, regardless of the order in which
the corresponding range-spec appeared in the received Range header
field. Since the typical overhead between each part of a "multipart/
byteranges" is around 80 bytes, depending on the selected
representation's media type and the chosen boundary parameter length,
it can be less efficient to transfer many small disjoint parts than it is to
transfer the entire selected representation.

A server MUST NOT generate a multipart response to a request for a

single range, since a client that does not request multiple parts might
not support multipart responses. However, a server MAY generate a
"multipart/byteranges" response with only a single body part if multiple
ranges were requested and only one range was found to be satisfiable or
only one range remained after coalescing. A client that cannot process a
"multipart/byteranges" response MUST NOT generate a request that asks
for multiple ranges.

A server that generates a multipart response SHOULD send the parts in

the same order that the corresponding range-spec appeared in the
received Range header field, excluding those ranges that were deemed
unsatisfiable or that were coalesced into other ranges. A client that
receives a multipart response MUST inspect the Content-Range header
field present in each body part in order to determine which range is
contained in that body part; a client cannot rely on receiving the same
ranges that it requested, nor the same order that it requested.

15.3.7.3. Combining Parts

A response might transfer only a subrange of a representation if the
connection closed prematurely or if the request used one or more Range
specifications. After several such transfers, a client might have received
several ranges of the same representation. These ranges can only be
safely combined if they all have in common the same strong validator
(Section 8.8.1).

A client that has received multiple partial responses to GET requests on a

target resource MAY combine those responses into a larger continuous
range if they share the same strong validator.
If the most recent response is an incomplete 200 (OK) response, then the
header fields of that response are used for any combined response and
replace those of the matching stored responses.

If the most recent response is a 206 (Partial Content) response and at

least one of the matching stored responses is a 200 (OK), then the
combined response header fields consist of the most recent 200
response's header fields. If all of the matching stored responses are 206
responses, then the stored response with the most recent header fields is
used as the source of header fields for the combined response, except
that the client MUST use other header fields provided in the new
response, aside from Content-Range, to replace all instances of the
corresponding header fields in the stored response.

The combined response content consists of the union of partial content

ranges within the new response and all of the matching stored
responses. If the union consists of the entire range of the representation,
then the client MUST process the combined response as if it were a
complete 200 (OK) response, including a Content-Length header field
that reflects the complete length. Otherwise, the client MUST process the
set of continuous ranges as one of the following: an incomplete 200 (OK)
response if the combined response is a prefix of the representation, a
single 206 (Partial Content) response containing "multipart/byteranges"
content, or multiple 206 (Partial Content) responses, each with one
continuous range that is indicated by a Content-Range header field.

15.4. Redirection 3xx

The 3xx (Redirection) class of status code indicates that further action
needs to be taken by the user agent in order to fulfill the request. There
are several types of redirects:

1. Redirects that indicate this resource might be available at a different

URI, as provided by the Location header field, as in the status codes
301 (Moved Permanently), 302 (Found), 307 (Temporary Redirect),
and 308 (Permanent Redirect).
2. Redirection that offers a choice among matching resources capable
of representing this resource, as in the 300 (Multiple Choices) status
code.
3. Redirection to a different resource, identified by the Location header
field, that can represent an indirect response to the request, as in
 the 303 (See Other) status code.
4. Redirection to a previously stored result, as in the 304 (Not
Modified) status code.

Note: In HTTP/1.0, the status codes 301 (Moved Permanently) and 302
(Found) were originally defined as method-preserving ([HTTP/1.0],
Section 9.3) to match their implementation at CERN; 303 (See Other) was
defined for a redirection that changed its method to GET. However, early
user agents split on whether to redirect POST requests as POST
(according to then-current specification) or as GET (the safer alternative
when redirected to a different site). Prevailing practice eventually
converged on changing the method to GET. 307 (Temporary Redirect)
and 308 (Permanent Redirect) [RFC7538] were later added to
unambiguously indicate method-preserving redirects, and status codes
301 and 302 have been adjusted to allow a POST request to be
redirected as GET.

If a Location header field (Section 10.2.2) is provided, the user agent MAY
automatically redirect its request to the URI referenced by the Location
field value, even if the specific status code is not understood. Automatic
redirection needs to be done with care for methods not known to be
safe, as defined in Section 9.2.1, since the user might not wish to redirect
an unsafe request.

When automatically following a redirected request, the user agent

SHOULD resend the original request message with the following
modifications:

1. Replace the target URI with the URI referenced by the redirection
response's Location header field value after resolving it relative to
the original request's target URI.

2. Remove header fields that were automatically generated by the

implementation, replacing them with updated values as appropriate
to the new request. This includes:

1. Connection-specific header fields (see Section 7.6.1),

2. Header fields specific to the client's proxy configuration,
including (but not limited to) Proxy-Authorization,
3. Origin-specific header fields (if any), including (but not limited
to) Host,
4. Validating header fields that were added by the
 implementation's cache (e.g., If-None-Match, If-Modified-
Since), and
5. Resource-specific header fields, including (but not limited to)
Referer, Origin, Authorization, and Cookie.
3. Consider removing header fields that were not automatically
generated by the implementation (i.e., those present in the request
because they were added by the calling context) where there are
security implications; this includes but is not limited to Authorization
and Cookie.

4. Change the request method according to the redirecting status

code's semantics, if applicable.

5. If the request method has been changed to GET or HEAD, remove

content-specific header fields, including (but not limited to)
Content-Encoding, Content-Language, Content-Location, Content-
Type, Content-Length, Digest, Last-Modified.

A client SHOULD detect and intervene in cyclical redirections (i.e.,

"infinite" redirection loops).

Note: An earlier version of this specification recommended a maximum

of five redirections ([RFC2068], Section 10.3). Content developers need to
be aware that some clients might implement such a fixed limitation.

15.4.1. 300 Multiple Choices

The 300 (Multiple Choices) status code indicates that the target resource
has more than one representation, each with its own more specific
identifier, and information about the alternatives is being provided so
that the user (or user agent) can select a preferred representation by
redirecting its request to one or more of those identifiers. In other words,
the server desires that the user agent engage in reactive negotiation to
select the most appropriate representation(s) for its needs (Section 12).

If the server has a preferred choice, the server SHOULD generate a

Location header field containing a preferred choice's URI reference. The
user agent MAY use the Location field value for automatic redirection.

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

A 300 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

Note: The original proposal for the 300 status code defined the URI
header field as providing a list of alternative representations, such that it
would be usable for 200, 300, and 406 responses and be transferred in
responses to the HEAD method. However, lack of deployment and
disagreement over syntax led to both URI and Alternates (a subsequent
proposal) being dropped from this specification. It is possible to
communicate the list as a Link header field value [RFC8288] whose
members have a relationship of "alternate", though deployment is a
chicken-and-egg problem.

15.4.2. 301 Moved Permanently

The 301 (Moved Permanently) status code indicates that the target
resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future
references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs. The
server is suggesting that a user agent with link-editing capability can
permanently replace references to the target URI with one of the new
references sent by the server. However, this suggestion is usually ignored
unless the user agent is actively editing references (e.g., engaged in
authoring content), the connection is secured, and the origin server is a
trusted authority for the content being edited.

The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response

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

Note: For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the request
method from POST to GET for the subsequent request. If this behavior is
undesired, the 308 (Permanent Redirect) status code can be used instead.

A 301 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.4.3. 302 Found

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

The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response

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

Note: For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the request
method from POST to GET for the subsequent request. If this behavior is
undesired, the 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code can be used instead.

15.4.4. 303 See Other

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

This status code is applicable to any HTTP method. It is primarily used to

allow the output of a POST action to redirect the user agent to a
different resource, since doing so provides the information
corresponding to the POST response as a resource that can be separately
identified, bookmarked, and cached.

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

Except for responses to a HEAD request, the representation of a 303

response ought to contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the
same URI reference provided in the Location header field.

15.4.5. 304 Not Modified

The 304 (Not Modified) status code indicates that a conditional GET or
HEAD request has been received and would have resulted in a 200 (OK)
response if it were not for the fact that the condition evaluated to false.
In other words, there is no need for the server to transfer a
representation of the target resource because the request indicates that
the client, which made the request conditional, already has a valid
representation; the server is therefore redirecting the client to make use
of that stored representation as if it were the content of a 200 (OK)
response.

The server generating a 304 response MUST generate any of the

following header fields that would have been sent in a 200 (OK) response
to the same request:

• Content-Location, Date, ETag, and Vary

• Cache-Control and Expires (see [CACHING])

Since the goal of a 304 response is to minimize information transfer

when the recipient already has one or more cached representations, a
sender SHOULD NOT generate representation metadata other than the
above listed fields unless said metadata exists for the purpose of guiding
cache updates (e.g., Last-Modified might be useful if the response does
not have an ETag field).

Requirements on a cache that receives a 304 response are defined in

Section 4.3.4 of [CACHING]. If the conditional request originated with an
outbound client, such as a user agent with its own cache sending a
conditional GET to a shared proxy, then the proxy SHOULD forward the
304 response to that client.

A 304 response is terminated by the end of the header section; it cannot

contain content or trailers.

15.4.6. 305 Use Proxy

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

15.4.7. 306 (Unused)

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

15.4.8. 307 Temporary Redirect

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

The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response

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

15.4.9. 308 Permanent Redirect

The 308 (Permanent Redirect) status code indicates that the target
resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future
references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs. The
server is suggesting that a user agent with link-editing capability can
permanently replace references to the target URI with one of the new
references sent by the server. However, this suggestion is usually ignored
unless the user agent is actively editing references (e.g., engaged in
authoring content), the connection is secured, and the origin server is a
trusted authority for the content being edited.

The server SHOULD generate a Location header field in the response

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

A 308 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

Note: This status code is much younger (June 2014) than its sibling
codes and thus might not be recognized everywhere. See Section 4 of
[RFC7538] for deployment considerations.

15.5. Client Error 4xx

The 4xx (Client Error) class of status code indicates that the client seems
to have erred. Except when responding to a HEAD request, the server
SHOULD send a representation containing an explanation of the error
situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent condition. These
status codes are applicable to any request method. User agents SHOULD
display any included representation to the user.

15.5.1. 400 Bad Request

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

15.5.2. 401 Unauthorized

The 401 (Unauthorized) status code indicates that the request has not
been applied because it lacks valid authentication credentials for the
target resource. The server generating a 401 response MUST send a
WWW-Authenticate header field (Section 11.6.1) containing at least one
challenge applicable to the target resource.

If the request included authentication credentials, then the 401 response

indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials. The
user agent MAY repeat the request with a new or replaced Authorization
header field (Section 11.6.2). If the 401 response contains the same
challenge as the prior response, and the user agent has already
attempted authentication at least once, then the user agent SHOULD
present the enclosed representation to the user, since it usually contains
relevant diagnostic information.
15.5.3. 402 Payment Required
The 402 (Payment Required) status code is reserved for future use.

15.5.4. 403 Forbidden

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

If authentication credentials were provided in the request, the server

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

An origin server that wishes to "hide" the current existence of a

forbidden target resource MAY instead respond with a status code of 404
(Not Found).

15.5.5. 404 Not Found

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

A 404 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.5.6. 405 Method Not Allowed

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

A 405 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.5.7. 406 Not Acceptable

The 406 (Not Acceptable) status code indicates that the target resource
does not have a current representation that would be acceptable to the
user agent, according to the proactive negotiation header fields received
in the request (Section 12.1), and the server is unwilling to supply a
default representation.

The server SHOULD generate content containing a list of available

representation characteristics and corresponding resource identifiers
from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate.
A user agent MAY automatically select the most appropriate choice from
that list. However, this specification does not define any standard for
such automatic selection, as described in Section 15.4.1.

15.5.8. 407 Proxy Authentication Required

The 407 (Proxy Authentication Required) status code is similar to 401
(Unauthorized), but it indicates that the client needs to authenticate itself
in order to use a proxy for this request. The proxy MUST send a Proxy-
Authenticate header field (Section 11.7.1) containing a challenge
applicable to that proxy for the request. The client MAY repeat the
request with a new or replaced Proxy-Authorization header field (Section
11.7.2).

15.5.9. 408 Request Timeout

The 408 (Request Timeout) status code indicates that the server did not
receive a complete request message within the time that it was prepared
to wait.

If the client has an outstanding request in transit, it MAY repeat that

request. If the current connection is not usable (e.g., as it would be in
HTTP/1.1 because request delimitation is lost), a new connection will be
used.

15.5.10. 409 Conflict

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

Conflicts are most likely to occur in response to a PUT request. For

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

15.5.11. 410 Gone

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

The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web

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

A 410 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.5.12. 411 Length Required

The 411 (Length Required) status code indicates that the server refuses
to accept the request without a defined Content-Length (Section 8.6).
The client MAY repeat the request if it adds a valid Content-Length
header field containing the length of the request content.

15.5.13. 412 Precondition Failed

The 412 (Precondition Failed) status code indicates that one or more
conditions given in the request header fields evaluated to false when
tested on the server (Section 13). This response status code allows the
client to place preconditions on the current resource state (its current
representations and metadata) and, thus, prevent the request method
from being applied if the target resource is in an unexpected state.

15.5.14. 413 Content Too Large

The 413 (Content Too Large) status code indicates that the server is
refusing to process a request because the request content is larger than
the server is willing or able to process. The server MAY terminate the
request, if the protocol version in use allows it; otherwise, the server MAY
close the connection.

If the condition is temporary, the server SHOULD generate a Retry-After

header field to indicate that it is temporary and after what time the client
MAY try again.

15.5.15. 414 URI Too Long

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

A 414 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.5.16. 415 Unsupported Media Type

The 415 (Unsupported Media Type) status code indicates that the origin
server is refusing to service the request because the content is in a
format not supported by this method on the target resource.

The format problem might be due to the request's indicated Content-

Type or Content-Encoding, or as a result of inspecting the data directly.

If the problem was caused by an unsupported content coding, the

Accept-Encoding response header field (Section 12.5.3) ought to be used
to indicate which (if any) content codings would have been accepted in
the request.

On the other hand, if the cause was an unsupported media type, the
Accept response header field (Section 12.5.1) can be used to indicate
which media types would have been accepted in the request.

15.5.17. 416 Range Not Satisfiable

The 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) status code indicates that the set of
ranges in the request's Range header field (Section 14.2) has been
rejected either because none of the requested ranges are satisfiable or
because the client has requested an excessive number of small or
overlapping ranges (a potential denial of service attack).

Each range unit defines what is required for its own range sets to be
satisfiable. For example, Section 14.1.2 defines what makes a bytes range
set satisfiable.

A server that generates a 416 response to a byte-range request SHOULD

generate a Content-Range header field specifying the current length of
the selected representation (Section 14.4).

For example:

HTTP/1.1 416 Range Not Satisfiable

Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:41:54 GMT
Content-Range: bytes */47022

Note: Because servers are free to ignore Range, many implementations

will respond with the entire selected representation in a 200 (OK)
response. That is partly because most clients are prepared to receive a
200 (OK) to complete the task (albeit less efficiently) and partly because
clients might not stop making an invalid range request until they have
received a complete representation. Thus, clients cannot depend on
receiving a 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) response even when it is most
appropriate.

15.5.18. 417 Expectation Failed

The 417 (Expectation Failed) status code indicates that the expectation
given in the request's Expect header field (Section 10.1.1) could not be
met by at least one of the inbound servers.
15.5.19. 418 (Unused)
[RFC2324] was an April 1 RFC that lampooned the various ways HTTP
was abused; one such abuse was the definition of an application-specific
418 status code, which has been deployed as a joke often enough for the
code to be unusable for any future use.

Therefore, the 418 status code is reserved in the IANA HTTP Status Code
Registry. This indicates that the status code cannot be assigned to other
applications currently. If future circumstances require its use (e.g.,
exhaustion of 4NN status codes), it can be re-assigned to another use.

15.5.20. 421 Misdirected Request

The 421 (Misdirected Request) status code indicates that the request was
directed at a server that is unable or unwilling to produce an
authoritative response for the target URI. An origin server (or gateway
acting on behalf of the origin server) sends 421 to reject a target URI that
does not match an origin for which the server has been configured
(Section 4.3.1) or does not match the connection context over which the
request was received (Section 7.4).

A client that receives a 421 (Misdirected Request) response MAY retry the
request, whether or not the request method is idempotent, over a
different connection, such as a fresh connection specific to the target
resource's origin, or via an alternative service [ALTSVC].

A proxy MUST NOT generate a 421 response.

15.5.21. 422 Unprocessable Content

The 422 (Unprocessable Content) status code indicates that the server
understands the content type of the request content (hence a 415
(Unsupported Media Type) status code is inappropriate), and the syntax
of the request content is correct, but it was unable to process the
contained instructions. For example, this status code can be sent if an
XML request content contains well-formed (i.e., syntactically correct), but
semantically erroneous XML instructions.

15.5.22. 426 Upgrade Required

The 426 (Upgrade Required) status code indicates that the server refuses
to perform the request using the current protocol but might be willing to
do so after the client upgrades to a different protocol. The server MUST
send an Upgrade header field in a 426 response to indicate the required
protocol(s) (Section 7.8).

Example:

HTTP/1.1 426 Upgrade Required

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

This service requires use of the HTTP/3.0 protocol.

15.6. Server Error 5xx

The 5xx (Server Error) class of status code indicates that the server is
aware that it has erred or is incapable of performing the requested
method. Except when responding to a HEAD request, the server SHOULD
send a representation containing an explanation of the error situation,
and whether it is a temporary or permanent condition. A user agent
SHOULD display any included representation to the user. These status
codes are applicable to any request method.

15.6.1. 500 Internal Server Error

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

15.6.2. 501 Not Implemented

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

A 501 response is heuristically cacheable; i.e., unless otherwise indicated

by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
[CACHING]).

15.6.3. 502 Bad Gateway

The 502 (Bad Gateway) status code indicates that the server, while acting
as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from an inbound
server it accessed while attempting to fulfill the request.
15.6.4. 503 Service Unavailable
The 503 (Service Unavailable) status code indicates that the server is
currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overload or
scheduled maintenance, which will likely be alleviated after some delay.
The server MAY send a Retry-After header field (Section 10.2.3) to
suggest an appropriate amount of time for the client to wait before
retrying the request.

Note: The existence of the 503 status code does not imply that a server
has to use it when becoming overloaded. Some servers might simply
refuse the connection.

15.6.5. 504 Gateway Timeout

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

15.6.6. 505 HTTP Version Not Supported

The 505 (HTTP Version Not Supported) status code indicates that the
server does not support, or refuses to support, the major version of HTTP
that was used in the request message. The server is indicating that it is
unable or unwilling to complete the request using the same major
version as the client, as described in Section 2.5, other than with this
error message. The server SHOULD generate a representation for the 505
response that describes why that version is not supported and what
other protocols are supported by that server.

16. Extending HTTP

HTTP defines a number of generic extension points that can be used to
introduce capabilities to the protocol without introducing a new version,
including methods, status codes, field names, and further extensibility
points within defined fields, such as authentication schemes and cache
directives (see Cache-Control extensions in Section 5.2.3 of [CACHING]).
Because the semantics of HTTP are not versioned, these extension points
are persistent; the version of the protocol in use does not affect their
semantics.

Version-independent extensions are discouraged from depending on or

interacting with the specific version of the protocol in use. When this is
unavoidable, careful consideration needs to be given to how the
extension can interoperate across versions.

Additionally, specific versions of HTTP might have their own extensibility

points, such as transfer codings in HTTP/1.1 (Section 6.1 of [HTTP/1.1])
and HTTP/2 SETTINGS or frame types ([HTTP/2]). These extension points
are specific to the version of the protocol they occur within.

Version-specific extensions cannot override or modify the semantics of a

version-independent mechanism or extension point (like a method or
header field) without explicitly being allowed by that protocol element.
For example, the CONNECT method (Section 9.3.6) allows this.

These guidelines assure that the protocol operates correctly and

predictably, even when parts of the path implement different versions of
HTTP.

16.1. Method Extensibility

16.1.1. Method Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Method Registry", maintained
by IANA at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-methods, registers
method names.

HTTP method registrations MUST include the following fields:

• Method Name (see Section 9)

• Safe ("yes" or "no", see Section 9.2.1)
• Idempotent ("yes" or "no", see Section 9.2.2)
• Pointer to specification text

Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see

[RFC8126], Section 4.8).

16.1.2. Considerations for New Methods

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

Since message parsing (Section 6) needs to be independent of method

semantics (aside from responses to HEAD), definitions of new methods
cannot change the parsing algorithm or prohibit the presence of content
on either the request or the response message. Definitions of new
methods can specify that only a zero-length content is allowed by
requiring a Content-Length header field with a value of "0".

Likewise, new methods cannot use the special host:port and asterisk
forms of request target that are allowed for CONNECT and OPTIONS,
respectively (Section 7.1). A full URI in absolute form is needed for the
target URI, which means either the request target needs to be sent in
absolute form or the target URI will be reconstructed from the request
context in the same way it is for other methods.

A new method definition needs to indicate whether it is safe (Section

9.2.1), idempotent (Section 9.2.2), cacheable (Section 9.2.3), what
semantics are to be associated with the request content (if any), and
what refinements the method makes to header field or status code
semantics. If the new method is cacheable, its definition ought to
describe how, and under what conditions, a cache can store a response
and use it to satisfy a subsequent request. The new method ought to
describe whether it can be made conditional (Section 13.1) and, if so,
how a server responds when the condition is false. Likewise, if the new
method might have some use for partial response semantics (Section
14.2), it ought to document this, too.

Note: Avoid defining a method name that starts with "M-", since that
prefix might be misinterpreted as having the semantics assigned to it by
[RFC2774].

16.2. Status Code Extensibility

16.2.1. Status Code Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code Registry",
maintained by IANA at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-
codes, registers status code numbers.

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 [RFC8126], Section 4.8).

16.2.2. Considerations for New Status Codes

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

New status codes are required to fall under one of the categories
defined in Section 15. To allow existing parsers to process the response
message, new status codes cannot disallow content, although they can
mandate a zero-length content.

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

The definition of a new status code ought to explain the request

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

By default, a status code applies only to the request corresponding to

the response it occurs within. If a status code applies to a larger scope of
applicability — for example, all requests to the resource in question or all
requests to a server — this must be explicitly specified. When doing so, it
should be noted that not all clients can be expected to consistently apply
a larger scope because they might not understand the new status code.

The definition of a new final status code ought to specify whether or not
it is heuristically cacheable. Note that any response with a final status
code can be cached if the response has explicit freshness information. A
status code defined as heuristically cacheable is allowed to be cached
without explicit freshness information. Likewise, the definition of a status
code can place constraints upon cache behavior if the must-understand
cache directive is used. See [CACHING] for more information.

Finally, the definition of a new status code ought to indicate whether the
content has any implied association with an identified resource (Section
6.4.2).

16.3. Field Extensibility

HTTP's most widely used extensibility point is the definition of new
header and trailer fields.

New fields can be defined such that, when they are understood by a
recipient, they override or enhance the interpretation of previously
defined fields, define preconditions on request evaluation, or refine the
meaning of responses.

However, defining a field doesn't guarantee its deployment or

recognition by recipients. Most fields are designed with the expectation
that a recipient can safely ignore (but forward downstream) any field not
recognized. In other cases, the sender's ability to understand a given
field might be indicated by its prior communication, perhaps in the
protocol version or fields that it sent in prior messages, or its use of a
specific media type. Likewise, direct inspection of support might be
possible through an OPTIONS request or by interacting with a defined
well-known URI [RFC8615] if such inspection is defined along with the
field being introduced.

16.3.1. Field Name Registry

The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name Registry" defines the
namespace for HTTP field names.

Any party can request registration of an HTTP field. See Section 16.3.2
for considerations to take into account when creating a new HTTP field.

The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name Registry" is located

at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-fields/. Registration requests
can be made by following the instructions located there or by sending an
email to the "[email protected]" mailing list.

Field names are registered on the advice of a designated expert

(appointed by the IESG or their delegate). Fields with the status
'permanent' are Specification Required ([RFC8126], Section 4.6).

Registration requests consist of the following information:

Field name:
The requested field name. It MUST conform to the field-name syntax
defined in Section 5.1, and it SHOULD be restricted to just letters,
digits, and hyphen ('-') characters, with the first character being a
letter.

Status:
"permanent", "provisional", "deprecated", or "obsoleted".

Specification document(s):
Reference to the document that specifies the field, preferably including
a URI that can be used to retrieve a copy of the document. Optional
but encouraged for provisional registrations. An indication of the
relevant section(s) can also be included, but is not required.

And optionally:

Comments: Additional information, such as about reserved entries.

The expert(s) can define additional fields to be collected in the registry,

in consultation with the community.

Standards-defined names have a status of "permanent". Other names

can also be registered as permanent if the expert(s) finds that they are in
use, in consultation with the community. Other names should be
registered as "provisional".

Provisional entries can be removed by the expert(s) if — in consultation

with the community — the expert(s) find that they are not in use. The
expert(s) can change a provisional entry's status to permanent at any
time.

Note that names can be registered by third parties (including the

expert(s)) if the expert(s) determines that an unregistered name is widely
deployed and not likely to be registered in a timely manner otherwise.

16.3.2. Considerations for New Fields

HTTP header and trailer fields are a widely used extension point for the
protocol. While they can be used in an ad hoc fashion, fields that are
intended for wider use need to be carefully documented to ensure
interoperability.

In particular, authors of specifications defining new fields are advised to

consider and, where appropriate, document the following aspects:

• Under what conditions the field can be used; e.g., only in responses
or requests, in all messages, only on responses to a particular
request method, etc.
• Whether the field semantics are further refined by their context,
such as their use with certain request methods or status codes.
• The scope of applicability for the information conveyed. By default,
fields apply only to the message they are associated with, but some
response fields are designed to apply to all representations of a
resource, the resource itself, or an even broader scope.
Specifications that expand the scope of a response field will need to
carefully consider issues such as content negotiation, the time
period of applicability, and (in some cases) multi-tenant server
deployments.
• Under what conditions intermediaries are allowed to insert, delete,
or modify the field's value.
• If the field is allowable in trailers; by default, it will not be (see
Section 6.5.1).
• Whether it is appropriate or even required to list the field name in
the Connection header field (i.e., if the field is to be hop-by-hop; see
Section 7.6.1).
• Whether the field introduces any additional security considerations,
such as disclosure of privacy-related data.

Request header fields have additional considerations that need to be

documented if the default behavior is not appropriate:

• If it is appropriate to list the field name in a Vary response header

field (e.g., when the request header field is used by an origin server's
content selection algorithm; see Section 12.5.5).
• If the field is intended to be stored when received in a PUT request
(see Section 9.3.4).
• If the field ought to be removed when automatically redirecting a
request due to security concerns (see Section 15.4).

16.3.2.1. Considerations for New Field Names

Authors of specifications defining new fields are advised to choose a
short but descriptive field name. Short names avoid needless data
transmission; descriptive names avoid confusion and "squatting" on
names that might have broader uses.

To that end, limited-use fields (such as a header confined to a single

application or use case) are encouraged to use a name that includes that
use (or an abbreviation) as a prefix; for example, if the Foo Application
needs a Description field, it might use "Foo-Desc"; "Description" is too
generic, and "Foo-Description" is needlessly long.

While the field-name syntax is defined to allow any token character, in

practice some implementations place limits on the characters they
accept in field-names. To be interoperable, new field names SHOULD
constrain themselves to alphanumeric characters, "-", and ".", and
SHOULD begin with a letter. For example, the underscore ("_") character
can be problematic when passed through non-HTTP gateway interfaces
(see Section 17.10).

Field names ought not be prefixed with "X-"; see [BCP178] for further
information.

Other prefixes are sometimes used in HTTP field names; for example,
"Accept-" is used in many content negotiation headers, and "Content-" is
used as explained in Section 6.4. These prefixes are only an aid to
recognizing the purpose of a field and do not trigger automatic
processing.

16.3.2.2. Considerations for New Field Values

A major task in the definition of a new HTTP field is the specification of
the field value syntax: what senders should generate, and how recipients
should infer semantics from what is received.

Authors are encouraged (but not required) to use either the ABNF rules
in this specification or those in [RFC8941] to define the syntax of new
field values.

Authors are advised to carefully consider how the combination of

multiple field lines will impact them (see Section 5.3). Because senders
might erroneously send multiple values, and both intermediaries and
HTTP libraries can perform combination automatically, this applies to all
field values — even when only a single value is anticipated.
Therefore, authors are advised to delimit or encode values that contain
commas (e.g., with the quoted-string rule of Section 5.6.4, the String data
type of [RFC8941], or a field-specific encoding). This ensures that
commas within field data are not confused with the commas that delimit
a list value.

For example, the Content-Type field value only allows commas inside
quoted strings, which can be reliably parsed even when multiple values
are present. The Location field value provides a counter-example that
should not be emulated: because URIs can include commas, it is not
possible to reliably distinguish between a single value that includes a
comma from two values.

Authors of fields with a singleton value (see Section 5.5) are additionally
advised to document how to treat messages where the multiple
members are present (a sensible default would be to ignore the field, but
this might not always be the right choice).

16.4. Authentication Scheme Extensibility

16.4.1. Authentication Scheme Registry
The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Authentication Scheme Registry"
defines the namespace for the authentication schemes in challenges and
credentials. It is maintained at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-
authschemes.

Registrations MUST include the following fields:

• Authentication Scheme Name

• Pointer to specification text
• Notes (optional)

Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see

[RFC8126], Section 4.8).

16.4.2. Considerations for New Authentication

Schemes
There are certain aspects of the HTTP Authentication framework that put
constraints on how new authentication schemes can work:

• HTTP authentication is presumed to be stateless: all of the

 information necessary to authenticate a request MUST be provided
in the request, rather than be dependent on the server remembering
prior requests. Authentication based on, or bound to, the underlying
connection is outside the scope of this specification and inherently
flawed unless steps are taken to ensure that the connection cannot
be used by any party other than the authenticated user (see Section
3.3).

• The authentication parameter "realm" is reserved for defining

protection spaces as described in Section 11.5. New schemes MUST
NOT use it in a way incompatible with that definition.

• The "token68" notation was introduced for compatibility with

existing authentication schemes and can only be used once per
challenge or credential. Thus, new schemes ought to use the auth-
param syntax instead, because otherwise future extensions will be
impossible.

• The parsing of challenges and credentials is defined by this

specification and cannot be modified by new authentication
schemes. When the auth-param syntax is used, all parameters ought
to support both token and quoted-string syntax, and syntactical
constraints ought to be defined on the field value after parsing (i.e.,
quoted-string processing). This is necessary so that recipients can
use a generic parser that applies to all authentication schemes.

Note: The fact that the value syntax for the "realm" parameter is
restricted to quoted-string was a bad design choice not to be
repeated for new parameters.

• Definitions of new schemes ought to define the treatment of

unknown extension parameters. In general, a "must-ignore" rule is
preferable to a "must-understand" rule, because otherwise it will be
hard to introduce new parameters in the presence of legacy
recipients. Furthermore, it's good to describe the policy for defining
new parameters (such as "update the specification" or "use this
registry").

• Authentication schemes need to document whether they are usable

in origin-server authentication (i.e., using WWW-Authenticate), and/
or proxy authentication (i.e., using Proxy-Authenticate).
 • The credentials carried in an Authorization header field are specific
to the user agent and, therefore, have the same effect on HTTP
caches as the "private" cache response directive (Section 5.2.2.7 of
[CACHING]), within the scope of the request in which they appear.

Therefore, new authentication schemes that choose not to carry

credentials in the Authorization header field (e.g., using a newly
defined header field) will need to explicitly disallow caching, by
mandating the use of cache response directives (e.g., "private").

• Schemes using Authentication-Info, Proxy-Authentication-Info, or

any other authentication related response header field need to
consider and document the related security considerations (see
Section 17.16.4).

16.5. Range Unit Extensibility

16.5.1. Range Unit Registry
The "HTTP Range Unit Registry" defines the namespace for the range
unit names and refers to their corresponding specifications. It is
maintained at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters.

Registration of an HTTP Range Unit MUST include the following fields:

• Name
• Description
• Pointer to specification text

Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see

[RFC8126], Section 4.8).

16.5.2. Considerations for New Range Units

Other range units, such as format-specific boundaries like pages,
sections, records, rows, or time, are potentially usable in HTTP for
application-specific purposes, but are not commonly used in practice.
Implementors of alternative range units ought to consider how they
would work with content codings and general-purpose intermediaries.

16.6. Content Coding Extensibility

16.6.1. Content Coding Registry
The "HTTP Content Coding Registry", maintained by IANA at https://
www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters/, registers content-coding
names.

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 (per the "HTTP Transfer Coding Registry" located at https://
www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters/) unless the encoding
transformation is identical (as is the case for the compression codings
defined in Section 8.4.1).

Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see Section

4.8 of [RFC8126]) and MUST conform to the purpose of content coding
defined in Section 8.4.1.

16.6.2. Considerations for New Content Codings

New content codings ought to be self-descriptive whenever possible,
with optional parameters discoverable within the coding format itself,
rather than rely on external metadata that might be lost during transit.

16.7. Upgrade Token Registry

The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Upgrade Token Registry" defines
the namespace for protocol-name tokens used to identify protocols in
the Upgrade header field. The registry is maintained at https://
www.iana.org/assignments/http-upgrade-tokens.

Each registered protocol name is associated with contact information

and an optional set of specifications that details how the connection will
be processed after it has been upgraded.

Registrations happen on a "First Come First Served" basis (see Section

4.4 of [RFC8126]) and are subject to the following rules:

1. A protocol-name token, once registered, stays registered forever.

2. A protocol-name token is case-insensitive and registered with the
preferred case to be generated by senders.
3. The registration MUST name a responsible party for the registration.
 4. The registration MUST name a point of contact.
5. The registration MAY name a set of specifications associated with
that token. Such specifications need not be publicly available.
6. The registration SHOULD name a set of expected "protocol-version"
tokens associated with that token at the time of registration.
7. The responsible party MAY change the registration at any time. The
IANA will keep a record of all such changes, and make them
available upon request.
8. The IESG MAY reassign responsibility for a protocol token. This will
normally only be used in the case when a responsible party cannot
be contacted.

17. Security Considerations

This section is meant to inform developers, information providers, and
users of known security concerns relevant to HTTP semantics and its use
for transferring information over the Internet. Considerations related to
caching are discussed in Section 7 of [CACHING], and considerations
related to HTTP/1.1 message syntax and parsing are discussed in Section
11 of [HTTP/1.1].

The list of considerations below is not exhaustive. Most security concerns

related to HTTP semantics are about securing server-side applications
(code behind the HTTP interface), securing user agent processing of
content received via HTTP, or secure use of the Internet in general, rather
than security of the protocol. The security considerations for URIs, which
are fundamental to HTTP operation, are discussed in Section 7 of [URI].
Various organizations maintain topical information and links to current
research on Web application security (e.g., [OWASP]).

17.1. Establishing Authority

HTTP relies on the notion of an authoritative response: a response that
has been determined by (or at the direction of) the origin server
identified within the target URI to be the most appropriate response for
that request given the state of the target resource at the time of
response message origination.

When a registered name is used in the authority component, the "http"

URI scheme (Section 4.2.1) relies on the user's local name resolution
service to determine where it can find authoritative responses. This
means that any attack on a user's network host table, cached names, or
name resolution libraries becomes an avenue for attack on establishing
authority for "http" URIs. Likewise, the user's choice of server for Domain
Name Service (DNS), and the hierarchy of servers from which it obtains
resolution results, could impact the authenticity of address mappings;
DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC, [RFC4033]) are one way to improve
authenticity, as are the various mechanisms for making DNS requests
over more secure transfer protocols.

Furthermore, after an IP address is obtained, establishing authority for an

"http" URI is vulnerable to attacks on Internet Protocol routing.

The "https" scheme (Section 4.2.2) is intended to prevent (or at least

reveal) many of these potential attacks on establishing authority,
provided that the negotiated connection is secured and the client
properly verifies that the communicating server's identity matches the
target URI's authority component (Section 4.3.4). Correctly implementing
such verification can be difficult (see [Georgiev]).

Authority for a given origin server can be delegated through protocol

extensions; for example, [ALTSVC]. Likewise, the set of servers for which a
connection is considered authoritative can be changed with a protocol
extension like [RFC8336].

Providing a response from a non-authoritative source, such as a shared

proxy cache, is often useful to improve performance and availability, but
only to the extent that the source can be trusted or the distrusted
response can be safely used.

Unfortunately, communicating authority to users can be difficult. For

example, phishing is an attack on the user's perception of authority,
where that perception can be misled by presenting similar branding in
hypertext, possibly aided by userinfo obfuscating the authority
component (see Section 4.2.1). User agents can reduce the impact of
phishing attacks by enabling users to easily inspect a target URI prior to
making an action, by prominently distinguishing (or rejecting) userinfo
when present, and by not sending stored credentials and cookies when
the referring document is from an unknown or untrusted source.

17.2. Risks of Intermediaries

HTTP intermediaries are inherently situated for on-path attacks.
Compromise of the systems on which the intermediaries run can result in
serious security and privacy problems. Intermediaries might have access
to security-related information, personal information about individual
users and organizations, and proprietary information belonging to users
and content providers. A compromised intermediary, or an intermediary
implemented or configured without regard to security and privacy
considerations, might be used in the commission of a wide range of
potential attacks.

Intermediaries that contain a shared cache are especially vulnerable to

cache poisoning attacks, as described in Section 7 of [CACHING].

Implementers need to consider the privacy and security implications of

their design and coding decisions, and of the configuration options they
provide to operators (especially the default configuration).

Intermediaries are no more trustworthy than the people and policies

under which they operate; HTTP cannot solve this problem.

17.3. Attacks Based on File and Path Names

Origin servers frequently make use of their local file system to manage
the mapping from target URI to resource representations. Most file
systems are not designed to protect against malicious file or path names.
Therefore, an origin server needs to avoid accessing names that have a
special significance to the system when mapping the target resource to
files, folders, or directories.

For example, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, and other operating systems use
".." as a path component to indicate a directory level above the current
one, and they use specially named paths or file names to send data to
system devices. Similar naming conventions might exist within other
types of storage systems. Likewise, local storage systems have an
annoying tendency to prefer user-friendliness over security when
handling invalid or unexpected characters, recomposition of
decomposed characters, and case-normalization of case-insensitive
names.

Attacks based on such special names tend to focus on either denial-of-

service (e.g., telling the server to read from a COM port) or disclosure of
configuration and source files that are not meant to be served.

17.4. Attacks Based on Command, Code, or

Query Injection
Origin servers often use parameters within the URI as a means of
identifying system services, selecting database entries, or choosing a
data source. However, data received in a request cannot be trusted. An
attacker could construct any of the request data elements (method,
target URI, header fields, or content) to contain data that might be
misinterpreted as a command, code, or query when passed through a
command invocation, language interpreter, or database interface.

For example, SQL injection is a common attack wherein additional query

language is inserted within some part of the target URI or header fields
(e.g., Host, Referer, etc.). If the received data is used directly within a
SELECT statement, the query language might be interpreted as a
database command instead of a simple string value. This type of
implementation vulnerability is extremely common, in spite of being easy
to prevent.

In general, resource implementations ought to avoid use of request data

in contexts that are processed or interpreted as instructions. Parameters
ought to be compared to fixed strings and acted upon as a result of that
comparison, rather than passed through an interface that is not prepared
for untrusted data. Received data that isn't based on fixed parameters
ought to be carefully filtered or encoded to avoid being misinterpreted.

Similar considerations apply to request data when it is stored and later

processed, such as within log files, monitoring tools, or when included
within a data format that allows embedded scripts.

17.5. Attacks via Protocol Element Length

Because HTTP uses mostly textual, character-delimited fields, parsers are
often vulnerable to attacks based on sending very long (or very slow)
streams of data, particularly where an implementation is expecting a
protocol element with no predefined length (Section 2.3).

To promote interoperability, specific recommendations are made for

minimum size limits on fields (Section 5.4). These are minimum
recommendations, chosen to be supportable even by implementations
with limited resources; it is expected that most implementations will
choose substantially higher limits.
A server can reject a message that has a target URI that is too long
(Section 15.5.15) or request content that is too large (Section 15.5.14).
Additional status codes related to capacity limits have been defined by
extensions to HTTP [RFC6585].

Recipients ought to carefully limit the extent to which they process other
protocol elements, including (but not limited to) request methods,
response status phrases, field names, numeric values, and chunk lengths.
Failure to limit such processing can result in arbitrary code execution due
to buffer or arithmetic overflows, and increased vulnerability to denial-
of-service attacks.

17.6. Attacks Using Shared-Dictionary

Compression
Some attacks on encrypted protocols use the differences in size created
by dynamic compression to reveal confidential information; for example,
[BREACH]. These attacks rely on creating a redundancy between
attacker-controlled content and the confidential information, such that a
dynamic compression algorithm using the same dictionary for both
content will compress more efficiently when the attacker-controlled
content matches parts of the confidential content.

HTTP messages can be compressed in a number of ways, including using

TLS compression, content codings, transfer codings, and other extension
or version-specific mechanisms.

The most effective mitigation for this risk is to disable compression on

sensitive data, or to strictly separate sensitive data from attacker-
controlled data so that they cannot share the same compression
dictionary. With careful design, a compression scheme can be designed
in a way that is not considered exploitable in limited use cases, such as
HPACK ([HPACK]).

17.7. Disclosure of Personal Information

Clients are often privy to large amounts of personal information,
including both information provided by the user to interact with
resources (e.g., the user's name, location, mail address, passwords,
encryption keys, etc.) and information about the user's browsing activity
over time (e.g., history, bookmarks, etc.). Implementations need to
prevent unintentional disclosure of personal information.
17.8. Privacy of Server Log Information
A server is in the position to save personal data about a user's requests
over time, which might identify their reading patterns or subjects of
interest. In particular, log information gathered at an intermediary often
contains a history of user agent interaction, across a multitude of sites,
that can be traced to individual users.

HTTP log information is confidential in nature; its handling is often

constrained by laws and regulations. Log information needs to be
securely stored and appropriate guidelines followed for its analysis.
Anonymization of personal information within individual entries helps,
but it is generally not sufficient to prevent real log traces from being re-
identified based on correlation with other access characteristics. As such,
access traces that are keyed to a specific client are unsafe to publish
even if the key is pseudonymous.

To minimize the risk of theft or accidental publication, log information

ought to be purged of personally identifiable information, including user
identifiers, IP addresses, and user-provided query parameters, as soon as
that information is no longer necessary to support operational needs for
security, auditing, or fraud control.

17.9. Disclosure of Sensitive Information in

URIs
URIs are intended to be shared, not secured, even when they identify
secure resources. URIs are often shown on displays, added to templates
when a page is printed, and stored in a variety of unprotected bookmark
lists. Many servers, proxies, and user agents log or display the target URI
in places where it might be visible to third parties. It is therefore unwise
to include information within a URI that is sensitive, personally
identifiable, or a risk to disclose.

When an application uses client-side mechanisms to construct a target

URI out of user-provided information, such as the query fields of a form
using GET, potentially sensitive data might be provided that would not
be appropriate for disclosure within a URI. POST is often preferred in
such cases because it usually doesn't construct a URI; instead, POST of a
form transmits the potentially sensitive data in the request content.
However, this hinders caching and uses an unsafe method for what
would otherwise be a safe request. Alternative workarounds include
transforming the user-provided data prior to constructing the URI or
filtering the data to only include common values that are not sensitive.
Likewise, redirecting the result of a query to a different (server-
generated) URI can remove potentially sensitive data from later links and
provide a cacheable response for later reuse.

Since the Referer header field tells a target site about the context that
resulted in a request, it has the potential to reveal information about the
user's immediate browsing history and any personal information that
might be found in the referring resource's URI. Limitations on the Referer
header field are described in Section 10.1.3 to address some of its
security considerations.

17.10. Application Handling of Field Names

Servers often use non-HTTP gateway interfaces and frameworks to
process a received request and produce content for the response. For
historical reasons, such interfaces often pass received field names as
external variable names, using a name mapping suitable for environment
variables.

For example, the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) mapping of protocol-

specific meta-variables, defined by Section 4.1.18 of [RFC3875], is applied
to received header fields that do not correspond to one of CGI's
standard variables; the mapping consists of prepending "HTTP_" to each
name and changing all instances of hyphen ("-") to underscore ("_"). This
same mapping has been inherited by many other application frameworks
in order to simplify moving applications from one platform to the next.

In CGI, a received Content-Length field would be passed as the meta-

variable "CONTENT_LENGTH" with a string value matching the received
field's value. In contrast, a received "Content_Length" header field would
be passed as the protocol-specific meta-variable
"HTTP_CONTENT_LENGTH", which might lead to some confusion if an
application mistakenly reads the protocol-specific meta-variable instead
of the default one. (This historical practice is why Section 16.3.2.1
discourages the creation of new field names that contain an underscore.)

Unfortunately, mapping field names to different interface names can

lead to security vulnerabilities if the mapping is incomplete or
ambiguous. For example, if an attacker were to send a field named
"Transfer_Encoding", a naive interface might map that to the same
variable name as the "Transfer-Encoding" field, resulting in a potential
request smuggling vulnerability (Section 11.2 of [HTTP/1.1]).

To mitigate the associated risks, implementations that perform such

mappings are advised to make the mapping unambiguous and complete
for the full range of potential octets received as a name (including those
that are discouraged or forbidden by the HTTP grammar). For example, a
field with an unusual name character might result in the request being
blocked, the specific field being removed, or the name being passed with
a different prefix to distinguish it from other fields.

17.11. Disclosure of Fragment after Redirects

Although fragment identifiers used within URI references are not sent in
requests, implementers ought to be aware that they will be visible to the
user agent and any extensions or scripts running as a result of the
response. In particular, when a redirect occurs and the original request's
fragment identifier is inherited by the new reference in Location (Section
10.2.2), this might have the effect of disclosing one site's fragment to
another site. If the first site uses personal information in fragments, it
ought to ensure that redirects to other sites include a (possibly empty)
fragment component in order to block that inheritance.

17.12. Disclosure of Product Information

The User-Agent (Section 10.1.5), Via (Section 7.6.3), and Server (Section
10.2.4) header fields often reveal information about the respective
sender's software systems. In theory, this can make it easier for an
attacker to exploit known security holes; in practice, attackers tend to try
all potential holes regardless of the apparent software versions being
used.

Proxies that serve as a portal through a network firewall ought to take

special precautions regarding the transfer of header information that
might identify hosts behind the firewall. The Via header field allows
intermediaries to replace sensitive machine names with pseudonyms.

17.13. Browser Fingerprinting

Browser fingerprinting is a set of techniques for identifying a specific
user agent over time through its unique set of characteristics. These
characteristics might include information related to how it uses the
underlying transport protocol, feature capabilities, and scripting
environment, though of particular interest here is the set of unique
characteristics that might be communicated via HTTP. Fingerprinting is
considered a privacy concern because it enables tracking of a user
agent's behavior over time ([Bujlow]) without the corresponding controls
that the user might have over other forms of data collection (e.g.,
cookies). Many general-purpose user agents (i.e., Web browsers) have
taken steps to reduce their fingerprints.

There are a number of request header fields that might reveal

information to servers that is sufficiently unique to enable fingerprinting.
The From header field is the most obvious, though it is expected that
From will only be sent when self-identification is desired by the user.
Likewise, Cookie header fields are deliberately designed to enable re-
identification, so fingerprinting concerns only apply to situations where
cookies are disabled or restricted by the user agent's configuration.

The User-Agent header field might contain enough information to

uniquely identify a specific device, usually when combined with other
characteristics, particularly if the user agent sends excessive details about
the user's system or extensions. However, the source of unique
information that is least expected by users is proactive negotiation
(Section 12.1), including the Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Encoding,
and Accept-Language header fields.

In addition to the fingerprinting concern, detailed use of the Accept-

Language header field can reveal information the user might consider to
be of a private nature. For example, understanding a given language set
might be strongly correlated to membership in a particular ethnic group.
An approach that limits such loss of privacy would be for a user agent to
omit the sending of Accept-Language except for sites that have been
explicitly permitted, perhaps via interaction after detecting a Vary header
field that indicates language negotiation might be useful.

In environments where proxies are used to enhance privacy, user agents

ought to be conservative in sending proactive negotiation header fields.
General-purpose user agents that provide a high degree of header field
configurability ought to inform users about the loss of privacy that might
result if too much detail is provided. As an extreme privacy measure,
proxies could filter the proactive negotiation header fields in relayed
requests.

17.14. Validator Retention

The validators defined by this specification are not intended to ensure
the validity of a representation, guard against malicious changes, or
detect on-path attacks. At best, they enable more efficient cache updates
and optimistic concurrent writes when all participants are behaving
nicely. At worst, the conditions will fail and the client will receive a
response that is no more harmful than an HTTP exchange without
conditional requests.

An entity tag can be abused in ways that create privacy risks. For
example, a site might deliberately construct a semantically invalid entity
tag that is unique to the user or user agent, send it in a cacheable
response with a long freshness time, and then read that entity tag in
later conditional requests as a means of re-identifying that user or user
agent. Such an identifying tag would become a persistent identifier for
as long as the user agent retained the original cache entry. User agents
that cache representations ought to ensure that the cache is cleared or
replaced whenever the user performs privacy-maintaining actions, such
as clearing stored cookies or changing to a private browsing mode.

17.15. Denial-of-Service Attacks Using Range

Unconstrained multiple range requests are susceptible to denial-of-
service attacks because the effort required to request many overlapping
ranges of the same data is tiny compared to the time, memory, and
bandwidth consumed by attempting to serve the requested data in many
parts. Servers ought to ignore, coalesce, or reject egregious range
requests, such as requests for more than two overlapping ranges or for
many small ranges in a single set, particularly when the ranges are
requested out of order for no apparent reason. Multipart range requests
are not designed to support random access.

17.16. Authentication Considerations

Everything about the topic of HTTP authentication is a security
consideration, so the list of considerations below is not exhaustive.
Furthermore, it is limited to security considerations regarding the
authentication framework, in general, rather than discussing all of the
potential considerations for specific authentication schemes (which
ought to be documented in the specifications that define those
schemes). Various organizations maintain topical information and links to
current research on Web application security (e.g., [OWASP]), including
common pitfalls for implementing and using the authentication schemes
found in practice.

17.16.1. Confidentiality of Credentials

The HTTP authentication framework does not define a single mechanism
for maintaining the confidentiality of credentials; instead, each
authentication scheme defines how the credentials are encoded prior to
transmission. While this provides flexibility for the development of future
authentication schemes, it is inadequate for the protection of existing
schemes that provide no confidentiality on their own, or that do not
sufficiently protect against replay attacks. Furthermore, if the server
expects credentials that are specific to each individual user, the exchange
of those credentials will have the effect of identifying that user even if
the content within credentials remains confidential.

HTTP depends on the security properties of the underlying transport- or

session-level connection to provide confidential transmission of fields.
Services that depend on individual user authentication require a secured
connection prior to exchanging credentials (Section 4.2.2).

17.16.2. Credentials and Idle Clients

Existing HTTP clients and user agents typically retain authentication
information indefinitely. HTTP does not provide a mechanism for the
origin server to direct clients to discard these cached credentials, since
the protocol has no awareness of how credentials are obtained or
managed by the user agent. The mechanisms for expiring or revoking
credentials can be specified as part of an authentication scheme
definition.

Circumstances under which credential caching can interfere with the

application's security model include but are not limited to:

• Clients that have been idle for an extended period, following which
the server might wish to cause the client to re-prompt the user for
credentials.
• Applications that include a session termination indication (such as a
"logout" or "commit" button on a page) after which the server side
 of the application "knows" that there is no further reason for the
client to retain the credentials.

User agents that cache credentials are encouraged to provide a readily

accessible mechanism for discarding cached credentials under user
control.

17.16.3. Protection Spaces

Authentication schemes that solely rely on the "realm" mechanism for
establishing a protection space will expose credentials to all resources on
an origin server. Clients that have successfully made authenticated
requests with a resource can use the same authentication credentials for
other resources on the same origin server. This makes it possible for a
different resource to harvest authentication credentials for other
resources.

This is of particular concern when an origin server hosts resources for

multiple parties under the same origin (Section 11.5). Possible mitigation
strategies include restricting direct access to authentication credentials
(i.e., not making the content of the Authorization request header field
available), and separating protection spaces by using a different host
name (or port number) for each party.

17.16.4. Additional Response Fields

Adding information to responses that are sent over an unencrypted
channel can affect security and privacy. The presence of the
Authentication-Info and Proxy-Authentication-Info header fields alone
indicates that HTTP authentication is in use. Additional information could
be exposed by the contents of the authentication-scheme specific
parameters; this will have to be considered in the definitions of these
schemes.

18. IANA Considerations

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

18.1. URI Scheme Registration

IANA has updated the "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Schemes"
registry [BCP35] at https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/ with
the permanent schemes listed in Table 2 in Section 4.2.

18.2. Method Registration

IANA has updated the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Method
Registry" at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-methods with the
registration procedure of Section 16.1.1 and the method names
summarized in the following table.

Method Safe Idempotent Section

CONNECT no no 9.3.6
DELETE no yes 9.3.5
GET yes yes 9.3.1
HEAD yes yes 9.3.2
OPTIONS yes yes 9.3.7
POST no no 9.3.3
PUT no yes 9.3.4
TRACE yes yes 9.3.8
* no no 18.2

Table 7

The method name "*" is reserved because using "*" as a method name
would conflict with its usage as a wildcard in some fields (e.g., "Access-
Control-Request-Method").

18.3. Status Code Registration

IANA has updated the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code
Registry" at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes with
the registration procedure of Section 16.2.1 and the status code values
summarized in the following table.

Value Description Section

100 Continue 15.2.1
101 Switching Protocols 15.2.2
200 OK 15.3.1
201 Created 15.3.2

Table 8
Value Description Section
202 Accepted 15.3.3
203 Non-Authoritative Information 15.3.4
204 No Content 15.3.5
205 Reset Content 15.3.6
206 Partial Content 15.3.7
300 Multiple Choices 15.4.1
301 Moved Permanently 15.4.2
302 Found 15.4.3
303 See Other 15.4.4
304 Not Modified 15.4.5
305 Use Proxy 15.4.6
306 (Unused) 15.4.7
307 Temporary Redirect 15.4.8
308 Permanent Redirect 15.4.9
400 Bad Request 15.5.1
401 Unauthorized 15.5.2
402 Payment Required 15.5.3
403 Forbidden 15.5.4
404 Not Found 15.5.5
405 Method Not Allowed 15.5.6
406 Not Acceptable 15.5.7
407 Proxy Authentication Required 15.5.8
408 Request Timeout 15.5.9
409 Conflict 15.5.10
410 Gone 15.5.11
411 Length Required 15.5.12
412 Precondition Failed 15.5.13
413 Content Too Large 15.5.14
414 URI Too Long 15.5.15
415 Unsupported Media Type 15.5.16
416 Range Not Satisfiable 15.5.17
417 Expectation Failed 15.5.18
418 (Unused) 15.5.19
421 Misdirected Request 15.5.20
422 Unprocessable Content 15.5.21
 Value Description Section
426 Upgrade Required 15.5.22
500 Internal Server Error 15.6.1
501 Not Implemented 15.6.2
502 Bad Gateway 15.6.3
503 Service Unavailable 15.6.4
504 Gateway Timeout 15.6.5
505 HTTP Version Not Supported 15.6.6

18.4. Field Name Registration

This specification updates the HTTP-related aspects of the existing
registration procedures for message header fields defined in [RFC3864].
It replaces the old procedures as they relate to HTTP by defining a new
registration procedure and moving HTTP field definitions into a separate
registry.

IANA has created a new registry titled "Hypertext Transfer Protocol

(HTTP) Field Name Registry" as outlined in Section 16.3.1.

IANA has moved all entries in the "Permanent Message Header Field
Names" and "Provisional Message Header Field Names" registries (see
https://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/) with the protocol
'http' to this registry and has applied the following changes:

1. The 'Applicable Protocol' field has been omitted.

2. Entries that had a status of 'standard', 'experimental', 'reserved', or
'informational' have been made to have a status of 'permanent'.
3. Provisional entries without a status have been made to have a status
of 'provisional'.
4. Permanent entries without a status (after confirmation that the
registration document did not define one) have been made to have
a status of 'provisional'. The expert(s) can choose to update the
entries' status if there is evidence that another is more appropriate.

IANA has annotated the "Permanent Message Header Field Names" and
"Provisional Message Header Field Names" registries with the following
note to indicate that HTTP field name registrations have moved:

Note
HTTP field name registrations have been moved to [https://
www.iana.org/assignments/http-fields] per [RFC9110].

IANA has updated the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name
Registry" with the field names listed in the following table.

Field Name Status Section Comments

Accept permanent 12.5.1
Accept-Charset deprecated 12.5.2
Accept-Encoding permanent 12.5.3
Accept-Language permanent 12.5.4
Accept-Ranges permanent 14.3
Allow permanent 10.2.1
Authentication-Info permanent 11.6.3
Authorization permanent 11.6.2
Connection permanent 7.6.1
Content-Encoding permanent 8.4
Content-Language permanent 8.5
Content-Length permanent 8.6
Content-Location permanent 8.7
Content-Range permanent 14.4
Content-Type permanent 8.3
Date permanent 6.6.1
ETag permanent 8.8.3
Expect permanent 10.1.1
From permanent 10.1.2
Host permanent 7.2
If-Match permanent 13.1.1
If-Modified-Since permanent 13.1.3
If-None-Match permanent 13.1.2
If-Range permanent 13.1.5
If-Unmodified-Since permanent 13.1.4
Last-Modified permanent 8.8.2
Location permanent 10.2.2
Max-Forwards permanent 7.6.2

Table 9
Field Name Status Section Comments
Proxy-Authenticate permanent 11.7.1
Proxy-Authentication-Info permanent 11.7.3
Proxy-Authorization permanent 11.7.2
Range permanent 14.2
Referer permanent 10.1.3
Retry-After permanent 10.2.3
Server permanent 10.2.4
TE permanent 10.1.4
Trailer permanent 6.6.2
Upgrade permanent 7.8
User-Agent permanent 10.1.5
Vary permanent 12.5.5
Via permanent 7.6.3
WWW-Authenticate permanent 11.6.1
* permanent 12.5.5 (reserved)

The field name "*" is reserved because using that name as an HTTP
header field might conflict with its special semantics in the Vary header
field (Section 12.5.5).

IANA has updated the "Content-MD5" entry in the new registry to have a
status of 'obsoleted' with references to Section 14.15 of [RFC2616] (for
the definition of the header field) and Appendix B of [RFC7231] (which
removed the field definition from the updated specification).

18.5. Authentication Scheme Registration

IANA has updated the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Authentication Scheme Registry" at https://www.iana.org/assignments/
http-authschemes with the registration procedure of Section 16.4.1. No
authentication schemes are defined in this document.

18.6. Content Coding Registration

IANA has updated the "HTTP Content Coding Registry" at https://
www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters/ with the registration
procedure of Section 16.6.1 and the content coding names summarized
in the table below.
Name Description Section
compress UNIX "compress" data format [Welch] 8.4.1.1
"deflate" compressed data ([RFC1951])
deflate 8.4.1.2
inside the "zlib" data format ([RFC1950])
gzip GZIP file format [RFC1952] 8.4.1.3
identity Reserved 12.5.3
x-
Deprecated (alias for compress) 8.4.1.1
compress
x-gzip Deprecated (alias for gzip) 8.4.1.3

Table 10

18.7. Range Unit Registration

IANA has updated the "HTTP Range Unit Registry" at https://
www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters/ with the registration
procedure of Section 16.5.1 and the range unit names summarized in the
table below.

Range Unit
Description Section
Name
bytes a range of octets 14.1.2
reserved as keyword to indicate range
none 14.3
requests are not supported

Table 11

18.8. Media Type Registration

IANA has updated the "Media Types" registry at https://www.iana.org/
assignments/media-types with the registration information in Section
14.6 for the media type "multipart/byteranges".

IANA has updated the registry note about "q" parameters with a link to
Section 12.5.1 of this document.

18.9. Port Registration

IANA has updated the "Service Name and Transport Protocol Port
Number Registry" at https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-
port-numbers/ for the services on ports 80 and 443 that use UDP or TCP
to:

1. use this document as "Reference", and

2. when currently unspecified, set "Assignee" to "IESG" and "Contact"
to "IETF_Chair".

18.10. Upgrade Token Registration

IANA has updated the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Upgrade
Token Registry" at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-upgrade-
tokens with the registration procedure described in Section 16.7 and the
upgrade token names summarized in the following table.

Name Description Expected Version Tokens Section

Hypertext Transfer any DIGIT.DIGIT (e.g.,
HTTP 2.5
Protocol "2.0")

Table 12

19. References
19.1. Normative References
[CACHING] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke, Ed.,
“HTTP Caching”, STD 98, RFC 9111, DOI 10.17487/RFC9111, June 2022.

[RFC1950] Deutsch, P. and J-L. Gailly, “ZLIB Compressed Data

Format Specification version 3.3”, RFC 1950, DOI 10.17487/RFC1950,
May 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1950>.
[RFC1951] Deutsch, P., “DEFLATE Compressed Data Format
Specification version 1.3”, RFC 1951, DOI 10.17487/RFC1951, May
1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1951>.

[RFC1952] Deutsch, P., “GZIP file format specification version 4.3”,

RFC 1952, DOI 10.17487/RFC1952, May 1996, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc1952>.

[RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, “Multipurpose Internet Mail

Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types”, RFC 2046, DOI 10.17487/
RFC2046, November 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2046>.

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate

Requirement Levels”, BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March
1997, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC4647] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., “Matching of Language
Tags”, BCP 47, RFC 4647, DOI 10.17487/RFC4647, September 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4647>.

[RFC4648] Josefsson, S., “The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data

Encodings”, RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC4648, October 2006, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4648>.

[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, “Augmented BNF for

Syntax Specifications: ABNF”, STD 68, RFC 5234, DOI 10.17487/
RFC5234, January 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.

[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley,
R., and W. Polk, “Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and
Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile”, RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/
RFC5280, May 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.

[RFC5322] Resnick, P., Ed., “Internet Message Format”, RFC 5322,

DOI 10.17487/RFC5322, October 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/
info/rfc5322>.

[RFC5646] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., “Tags for Identifying
Languages”, BCP 47, RFC 5646, DOI 10.17487/RFC5646, September
2009, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5646>.

[RFC6125] Saint-Andre, P. and J. Hodges, “Representation and

Verification of Domain-Based Application Service Identity within
Internet Public Key Infrastructure Using X.509 (PKIX) Certificates in the
Context of Transport Layer Security (TLS)”, RFC 6125, DOI 10.17487/
RFC6125, March 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6125>.

[RFC6365] Hoffman, P. and J. Klensin, “Terminology Used in

Internationalization in the IETF”, BCP 166, RFC 6365, DOI 10.17487/
RFC6365, September 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6365>.

[RFC7405] Kyzivat, P., “Case-Sensitive String Support in ABNF”, RFC

7405, DOI 10.17487/RFC7405, December 2014, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc7405>.

[RFC8174] Leiba, B., “Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC

2119 Key Words”, BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May
2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

[TCP] Postel, J., “Transmission Control Protocol”, STD 7, RFC 793, DOI
10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc793>.
 [TLS13] Rescorla, E., “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3”, RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.

[URI] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, “Uniform Resource

Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax”, STD 66, RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/
RFC3986, January 2005, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.

[USASCII] American National Standards Institute, “Coded Character

Set -- 7-bit American Standard Code for Information Interchange”,
ANSI X3.4, 1986.

[Welch] Welch, T., “A Technique for High-Performance Data

Compression”, IEEE Computer 17(6), DOI 10.1109/MC.1984.1659158,
June 1984, <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1659158/>.

19.2. Informative References

[ALTSVC] Nottingham, M., McManus, P., and J. Reschke, “HTTP
Alternative Services”, RFC 7838, DOI 10.17487/RFC7838, April 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7838>.

[BCP13] Freed, N. and J. Klensin, “Multipurpose Internet Mail

Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures”, BCP 13, RFC
4289, DOI 10.17487/RFC4289, December 2005.

Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, “Media Type Specifications and
Registration Procedures”, BCP 13, RFC 6838, DOI 10.17487/RFC6838,
January 2013.

<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp13>
[BCP178] Saint-Andre, P., Crocker, D., and M. Nottingham,
“Deprecating the "X-" Prefix and Similar Constructs in Application
Protocols”, BCP 178, RFC 6648, DOI 10.17487/RFC6648, June 2012.

<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp178>
[BCP35] Thaler, D., Ed., Hansen, T., and T. Hardie, “Guidelines and
Registration Procedures for URI Schemes”, BCP 35, RFC 7595, DOI
10.17487/RFC7595, June 2015.

<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp35>
[BREACH] Gluck, Y., Harris, N., and A. Prado, “BREACH: Reviving the
CRIME Attack”, July 2013, <http://breachattack.com/resources/
BREACH%20-%20SSL,%20gone%20in%2030%20seconds.pdf>.
[Bujlow] Bujlow, T., Carela-Español, V., Solé-Pareta, J., and P. Barlet-
Ros, “A Survey on Web Tracking: Mechanisms, Implications, and
Defenses”, DOI 10.1109/JPROC.2016.2637878, In Proceedings of the
IEEE 105(8), August 2017.

[COOKIE] Barth, A., “HTTP State Management Mechanism”, RFC

6265, DOI 10.17487/RFC6265, April 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/
info/rfc6265>.

[Err1912] RFC Errata, Erratum ID 1912, RFC 2978, <https://www.rfc-

editor.org/errata/eid1912>.

[Err5433] RFC Errata, Erratum ID 5433, RFC 2978, <https://www.rfc-

editor.org/errata/eid5433>.

[Georgiev] Georgiev, M., Iyengar, S., Jana, S., Anubhai, R., Boneh, D.,
and V. Shmatikov, “The Most Dangerous Code in the World: Validating
SSL Certificates in Non-Browser Software”, DOI
10.1145/2382196.2382204, In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM
Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '12), pp.
38-49, October 2012.

[HPACK] Peon, R. and H. Ruellan, “HPACK: Header Compression for

HTTP/2”, RFC 7541, DOI 10.17487/RFC7541, May 2015, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7541>.

[HTTP/1.0] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and H. Frystyk, “Hypertext

Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0”, RFC 1945, DOI 10.17487/RFC1945, May
1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1945>.

[HTTP/1.1] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke, Ed.,
“HTTP/1.1”, STD 99, RFC 9112, DOI 10.17487/RFC9112, June 2022.

[HTTP/2] Thomson, M., Ed. and C. Benfield, Ed., “HTTP/2”, RFC 9113,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9113, June 2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc9113>.

[HTTP/3] Bishop, M., Ed., “HTTP/3”, RFC 9114, DOI 10.17487/

RFC9114, June 2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9114>.

[ISO-8859-1] International Organization for Standardization,

“Information technology -- 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character
sets -- Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1”, ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, 1998.

[Kri2001] Kristol, D., “HTTP Cookies: Standards, Privacy, and Politics”,

ACM Transactions on Internet Technology 1(2), November 2001,
<http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.SE/0105018>.
[OWASP] The Open Web Application Security Project, <https://
www.owasp.org/>.

[REST] Fielding, R., “Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-

based Software Architectures”, Doctoral Dissertation, University of
California, Irvine, September 2000, <https://roy.gbiv.com/pubs/
dissertation/top.htm>.

[RFC1919] Chatel, M., “Classical versus Transparent IP Proxies”, RFC

1919, DOI 10.17487/RFC1919, March 1996, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc1919>.

[RFC2047] Moore, K., “MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)

Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text”, RFC 2047,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2047, November 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/
info/rfc2047>.

[RFC2068] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., and T.
Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1”, RFC 2068, DOI
10.17487/RFC2068, January 1997, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc2068>.

[RFC2145] Mogul, J., Fielding, R., Gettys, J., and H. Frystyk, “Use and
Interpretation of HTTP Version Numbers”, RFC 2145, DOI 10.17487/
RFC2145, May 1997, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2145>.

[RFC2295] Holtman, K. and A. Mutz, “Transparent Content

Negotiation in HTTP”, RFC 2295, DOI 10.17487/RFC2295, March 1998,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2295>.

[RFC2324] Masinter, L., “Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol

(HTCPCP/1.0)”, RFC 2324, DOI 10.17487/RFC2324, 1 April 1998,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2324>.

[RFC2557] Palme, J., Hopmann, A., and N. Shelness, “MIME

Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)”, RFC
2557, DOI 10.17487/RFC2557, March 1999, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc2557>.

[RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L.,
Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol --
HTTP/1.1”, RFC 2616, DOI 10.17487/RFC2616, June 1999, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2616>.

[RFC2617] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P., Hostetler, J., Lawrence, S.,

Leach, P., Luotonen, A., and L. Stewart, “HTTP Authentication: Basic and
Digest Access Authentication”, RFC 2617, DOI 10.17487/RFC2617, June
1999, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2617>.

[RFC2774] Nielsen, H., Leach, P., and S. Lawrence, “An HTTP

Extension Framework”, RFC 2774, DOI 10.17487/RFC2774, February
2000, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2774>.

[RFC2818] Rescorla, E., “HTTP Over TLS”, RFC 2818, DOI 10.17487/
RFC2818, May 2000, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2818>.

[RFC2978] Freed, N. and J. Postel, “IANA Charset Registration

Procedures”, BCP 19, RFC 2978, DOI 10.17487/RFC2978, October 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2978>.

[RFC3040] Cooper, I., Melve, I., and G. Tomlinson, “Internet Web

Replication and Caching Taxonomy”, RFC 3040, DOI 10.17487/
RFC3040, January 2001, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3040>.

[RFC3864] Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, “Registration

Procedures for Message Header Fields”, BCP 90, RFC 3864, DOI
10.17487/RFC3864, September 2004, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc3864>.

[RFC3875] Robinson, D. and K. Coar, “The Common Gateway

Interface (CGI) Version 1.1”, RFC 3875, DOI 10.17487/RFC3875, October
2004, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3875>.

[RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, “DNS Security Introduction and Requirements”, RFC 4033, DOI
10.17487/RFC4033, March 2005, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc4033>.

[RFC4559] Jaganathan, K., Zhu, L., and J. Brezak, “SPNEGO-based

Kerberos and NTLM HTTP Authentication in Microsoft Windows”, RFC
4559, DOI 10.17487/RFC4559, June 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/
info/rfc4559>.

[RFC5789] Dusseault, L. and J. Snell, “PATCH Method for HTTP”, RFC

5789, DOI 10.17487/RFC5789, March 2010, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc5789>.

[RFC5905] Mills, D., Martin, J., Ed., Burbank, J., and W. Kasch,
“Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms
Specification”, RFC 5905, DOI 10.17487/RFC5905, June 2010, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5905>.

[RFC6454] Barth, A., “The Web Origin Concept”, RFC 6454, DOI
10.17487/RFC6454, December 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc6454>.

[RFC6585] Nottingham, M. and R. Fielding, “Additional HTTP Status

Codes”, RFC 6585, DOI 10.17487/RFC6585, April 2012, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6585>.

[RFC7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., “Hypertext Transfer

Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing”, RFC 7230, DOI
10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc7230>.

[RFC7231] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., “Hypertext Transfer

Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content”, RFC 7231, DOI 10.17487/
RFC7231, June 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7231>.

[RFC7232] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., “Hypertext Transfer

Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Conditional Requests”, RFC 7232, DOI 10.17487/
RFC7232, June 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7232>.

[RFC7233] Fielding, R., Ed., Lafon, Y., Ed., and J. Reschke, Ed.,
“Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Range Requests”, RFC 7233,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7233, June 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc7233>.

[RFC7234] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke, Ed.,
“Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching”, RFC 7234, DOI
10.17487/RFC7234, June 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc7234>.

[RFC7235] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., “Hypertext Transfer

Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Authentication”, RFC 7235, DOI 10.17487/
RFC7235, June 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7235>.

[RFC7538] Reschke, J., “The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Status Code

308 (Permanent Redirect)”, RFC 7538, DOI 10.17487/RFC7538, April
2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7538>.

[RFC7540] Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., “Hypertext

Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)”, RFC 7540, DOI 10.17487/
RFC7540, May 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7540>.

[RFC7578] Masinter, L., “Returning Values from Forms: multipart/

form-data”, RFC 7578, DOI 10.17487/RFC7578, July 2015, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7578>.

[RFC7615] Reschke, J., “HTTP Authentication-Info and Proxy-

Authentication-Info Response Header Fields”, RFC 7615, DOI 10.17487/
RFC7615, September 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7615>.

[RFC7616] Shekh-Yusef, R., Ed., Ahrens, D., and S. Bremer, “HTTP

Digest Access Authentication”, RFC 7616, DOI 10.17487/RFC7616,
September 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7616>.

[RFC7617] Reschke, J., “The 'Basic' HTTP Authentication Scheme”,

RFC 7617, DOI 10.17487/RFC7617, September 2015, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc7617>.

[RFC7694] Reschke, J., “Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Client-

Initiated Content-Encoding”, RFC 7694, DOI 10.17487/RFC7694,
November 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7694>.

[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, “Guidelines for

Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs”, BCP 26, RFC 8126,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/
rfc8126>.

[RFC8187] Reschke, J., “Indicating Character Encoding and Language

for HTTP Header Field Parameters”, RFC 8187, DOI 10.17487/RFC8187,
September 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8187>.

[RFC8246] McManus, P., “HTTP Immutable Responses”, RFC 8246,

DOI 10.17487/RFC8246, September 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/
info/rfc8246>.

[RFC8288] Nottingham, M., “Web Linking”, RFC 8288, DOI 10.17487/

RFC8288, October 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8288>.

[RFC8336] Nottingham, M. and E. Nygren, “The ORIGIN HTTP/2

Frame”, RFC 8336, DOI 10.17487/RFC8336, March 2018, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8336>.

[RFC8615] Nottingham, M., “Well-Known Uniform Resource

Identifiers (URIs)”, RFC 8615, DOI 10.17487/RFC8615, May 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8615>.

[RFC8941] Nottingham, M. and P-H. Kamp, “Structured Field Values

for HTTP”, RFC 8941, DOI 10.17487/RFC8941, February 2021, <https://
www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8941>.

[Sniffing] WHATWG, “MIME Sniffing”, <https://

mimesniff.spec.whatwg.org>.

[WEBDAV] Dusseault, L., Ed., “HTTP Extensions for Web Distributed

Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV)”, RFC 4918, DOI 10.17487/
 RFC4918, June 2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4918>.

Appendix A. Collected ABNF

In the collected ABNF below, list rules are expanded per Section 5.6.1.

Accept = [ ( media-range [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS ( media-range

weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Charset = [ ( ( token / "*" ) [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS (
token / "*" ) [ weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Encoding = [ ( codings [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS ( codings
weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Language = [ ( language-range [ weight ] ) *( OWS "," OWS (
language-range [ weight ] ) ) ]
Accept-Ranges = acceptable-ranges
Allow = [ method *( OWS "," OWS method ) ]
Authentication-Info = [ auth-param *( OWS "," OWS auth-param ) ]
Authorization = credentials

BWS = OWS

Connection = [ connection-option *( OWS "," OWS connection-option )

]
Content-Encoding = [ content-coding *( OWS "," OWS content-coding )
]
Content-Language = [ language-tag *( OWS "," OWS language-tag ) ]
Content-Length = 1*DIGIT
Content-Location = absolute-URI / partial-URI
Content-Range = range-unit SP ( range-resp / unsatisfied-range )
Content-Type = media-type

Date = HTTP-date

ETag = entity-tag
Expect = [ expectation *( OWS "," OWS expectation ) ]

From = mailbox

GMT = %x47.4D.54 ; GMT

HTTP-date = IMF-fixdate / obs-date

Host = uri-host [ ":" port ]

IMF-fixdate = day-name "," SP date1 SP time-of-day SP GMT

If-Match = "*" / [ entity-tag *( OWS "," OWS entity-tag ) ]
If-Modified-Since = HTTP-date
If-None-Match = "*" / [ entity-tag *( OWS "," OWS entity-tag ) ]
If-Range = entity-tag / HTTP-date
If-Unmodified-Since = HTTP-date

Last-Modified = HTTP-date
Location = URI-reference

Max-Forwards = 1*DIGIT

OWS = *( SP / HTAB )

Proxy-Authenticate = [ challenge *( OWS "," OWS challenge ) ]

Proxy-Authentication-Info = [ auth-param *( OWS "," OWS auth-param
]
Proxy-Authorization = credentials

RWS = 1*( SP / HTAB )

Range = ranges-specifier
Referer = absolute-URI / partial-URI
Retry-After = HTTP-date / delay-seconds

Server = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )

TE = [ t-codings *( OWS "," OWS t-codings ) ]

Trailer = [ field-name *( OWS "," OWS field-name ) ]

URI-reference = <URI-reference, see [URI], Section 4.1>

Upgrade = [ protocol *( OWS "," OWS protocol ) ]
User-Agent = product *( RWS ( product / comment ) )

Vary = [ ( "*" / field-name ) *( OWS "," OWS ( "*" / field-name ) )

]
Via = [ ( received-protocol RWS received-by [ RWS comment ] ) *( OWS
"," OWS ( received-protocol RWS received-by [ RWS comment ] ) ) ]

WWW-Authenticate = [ challenge *( OWS "," OWS challenge ) ]

absolute-URI = <absolute-URI, see [URI], Section 4.3>

absolute-path = 1*( "/" segment )
acceptable-ranges = range-unit *( OWS "," OWS range-unit )
asctime-date = day-name SP date3 SP time-of-day SP year
auth-param = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )
auth-scheme = token
authority = <authority, see [URI], Section 3.2>
challenge = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / [ auth-param *( OWS ","
OWS auth-param ) ] ) ]
codings = content-coding / "identity" / "*"
comment = "(" *( ctext / quoted-pair / comment ) ")"
complete-length = 1*DIGIT
connection-option = token
content-coding = token
credentials = auth-scheme [ 1*SP ( token68 / [ auth-param *( OWS ","
OWS auth-param ) ] ) ]
ctext = HTAB / SP / %x21-27 ; '!'-'''
/ %x2A-5B ; '*'-'['
/ %x5D-7E ; ']'-'~'
/ obs-text

date1 = day SP month SP year

date2 = day "-" month "-" 2DIGIT
date3 = month SP ( 2DIGIT / ( SP DIGIT ) )
day = 2DIGIT
day-name = %x4D.6F.6E ; Mon
/ %x54.75.65 ; Tue
/ %x57.65.64 ; Wed
/ %x54.68.75 ; Thu
/ %x46.72.69 ; Fri
/ %x53.61.74 ; Sat
/ %x53.75.6E ; Sun
day-name-l = %x4D.6F.6E.64.61.79 ; Monday
/ %x54.75.65.73.64.61.79 ; Tuesday
/ %x57.65.64.6E.65.73.64.61.79 ; Wednesday
/ %x54.68.75.72.73.64.61.79 ; Thursday
/ %x46.72.69.64.61.79 ; Friday
/ %x53.61.74.75.72.64.61.79 ; Saturday
/ %x53.75.6E.64.61.79 ; Sunday
delay-seconds = 1*DIGIT

entity-tag = [ weak ] opaque-tag

etagc = "!" / %x23-7E ; '#'-'~'
/ obs-text
expectation = token [ "=" ( token / quoted-string ) parameters ]

field-content = field-vchar [ 1*( SP / HTAB / field-vchar )

field-vchar ]
field-name = token
field-value = *field-content
field-vchar = VCHAR / obs-text
first-pos = 1*DIGIT

hour = 2DIGIT
http-URI = "http://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]
https-URI = "https://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]

incl-range = first-pos "-" last-pos

int-range = first-pos "-" [ last-pos ]

language-range = <language-range, see [RFC4647], Section 2.1>

language-tag = <Language-Tag, see [RFC5646], Section 2.1>
last-pos = 1*DIGIT

mailbox = <mailbox, see [RFC5322], Section 3.4>

media-range = ( "*/*" / ( type "/*" ) / ( type "/" subtype ) )
parameters
media-type = type "/" subtype parameters
method = token
minute = 2DIGIT
month = %x4A.61.6E ; Jan
/ %x46.65.62 ; Feb
/ %x4D.61.72 ; Mar
/ %x41.70.72 ; Apr
/ %x4D.61.79 ; May
/ %x4A.75.6E ; Jun
/ %x4A.75.6C ; Jul
/ %x41.75.67 ; Aug
/ %x53.65.70 ; Sep
/ %x4F.63.74 ; Oct
/ %x4E.6F.76 ; Nov
/ %x44.65.63 ; Dec

obs-date = rfc850-date / asctime-date

obs-text = %x80-FF
opaque-tag = DQUOTE *etagc DQUOTE
other-range = 1*( %x21-2B ; '!'-'+'
/ %x2D-7E ; '-'-'~'
)

parameter = parameter-name "=" parameter-value

parameter-name = token
parameter-value = ( token / quoted-string )
parameters = *( OWS ";" OWS [ parameter ] )
partial-URI = relative-part [ "?" query ]
path-abempty = <path-abempty, see [URI], Section 3.3>
port = <port, see [URI], Section 3.2.3>
product = token [ "/" product-version ]
product-version = token
protocol = protocol-name [ "/" protocol-version ]
protocol-name = token
protocol-version = token
pseudonym = token

qdtext = HTAB / SP / "!" / %x23-5B ; '#'-'['

/ %x5D-7E ; ']'-'~'
/ obs-text
query = <query, see [URI], Section 3.4>
quoted-pair = "\" ( HTAB / SP / VCHAR / obs-text )
quoted-string = DQUOTE *( qdtext / quoted-pair ) DQUOTE
qvalue = ( "0" [ "." *3DIGIT ] ) / ( "1" [ "." *3"0" ] )

range-resp = incl-range "/" ( complete-length / "*" )

range-set = range-spec *( OWS "," OWS range-spec )
range-spec = int-range / suffix-range / other-range
range-unit = token
ranges-specifier = range-unit "=" range-set
received-by = pseudonym [ ":" port ]
received-protocol = [ protocol-name "/" ] protocol-version
relative-part = <relative-part, see [URI], Section 4.2>
rfc850-date = day-name-l "," SP date2 SP time-of-day SP GMT

second = 2DIGIT
segment = <segment, see [URI], Section 3.3>
subtype = token
suffix-length = 1*DIGIT
suffix-range = "-" suffix-length

t-codings = "trailers" / ( transfer-coding [ weight ] )

tchar = "!" / "#" / "$" / "%" / "&" / "'" / "*" / "+" / "-" / "." /
"^" / "_" / "`" / "|" / "~" / DIGIT / ALPHA
time-of-day = hour ":" minute ":" second
token = 1*tchar
token68 = 1*( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~" / "+" / "/" )
*"="
transfer-coding = token *( OWS ";" OWS transfer-parameter )
transfer-parameter = token BWS "=" BWS ( token / quoted-string )
type = token

unsatisfied-range = "*/" complete-length

uri-host = <host, see [URI], Section 3.2.2>
weak = %x57.2F ; W/
weight = OWS ";" OWS "q=" qvalue

year = 4DIGIT

Appendix B. Changes from Previous RFCs

B.1. Changes from RFC 2818
None.

B.2. Changes from RFC 7230

The sections introducing HTTP's design goals, history, architecture,
conformance criteria, protocol versioning, URIs, message routing, and
header fields have been moved here.

The requirement on semantic conformance has been replaced with

permission to ignore or work around implementation-specific failures.
(Section 2.2)

The description of an origin and authoritative access to origin servers has

been extended for both "http" and "https" URIs to account for alternative
services and secured connections that are not necessarily based on TCP.
(Sections 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.3.1, and 7.3.3)

Explicit requirements have been added to check the target URI scheme's
semantics and reject requests that don't meet any associated
requirements. (Section 7.4)

Parameters in media type, media range, and expectation can be empty

via one or more trailing semicolons. (Section 5.6.6)

"Field value" now refers to the value after multiple field lines are
combined with commas — by far the most common use. To refer to a
single header line's value, use "field line value". (Section 6.3)

Trailer field semantics now transcend the specifics of chunked transfer

coding. The use of trailer fields has been further limited to allow
generation as a trailer field only when the sender knows the field defines
that usage and to allow merging into the header section only if the
recipient knows the corresponding field definition permits and defines
how to merge. In all other cases, implementations are encouraged either
to store the trailer fields separately or to discard them instead of
merging. (Section 6.5.1)

The priority of the absolute form of the request URI over the Host header
field by origin servers has been made explicit to align with proxy
handling. (Section 7.2)

The grammar definition for the Via field's "received-by" was expanded in
RFC 7230 due to changes in the URI grammar for host [URI] that are not
desirable for Via. For simplicity, we have removed uri-host from the
received-by production because it can be encompassed by the existing
grammar for pseudonym. In particular, this change removed comma
from the allowed set of characters for a host name in received-by.
(Section 7.6.3)

B.3. Changes from RFC 7231

Minimum URI lengths to be supported by implementations are now
recommended. (Section 4.1)

The following have been clarified: CR and NUL in field values are to be
rejected or mapped to SP, and leading and trailing whitespace needs to
be stripped from field values before they are consumed. (Section 5.5)

Parameters in media type, media range, and expectation can be empty

via one or more trailing semicolons. (Section 5.6.6)

An abstract data type for HTTP messages has been introduced to define
the components of a message and their semantics as an abstraction
across multiple HTTP versions, rather than in terms of the specific syntax
form of HTTP/1.1 in [HTTP/1.1], and reflect the contents after the
message is parsed. This makes it easier to distinguish between
requirements on the content (what is conveyed) versus requirements on
the messaging syntax (how it is conveyed) and avoids baking limitations
of early protocol versions into the future of HTTP. (Section 6)

The terms "payload" and "payload body" have been replaced with
"content", to better align with its usage elsewhere (e.g., in field names)
and to avoid confusion with frame payloads in HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.
(Section 6.4)

The term "effective request URI" has been replaced with "target URI".
(Section 7.1)
Restrictions on client retries have been loosened to reflect
implementation behavior. (Section 9.2.2)

The fact that request bodies on GET, HEAD, and DELETE are not
interoperable has been clarified. (Sections 9.3.1, 9.3.2, and 9.3.5)

The use of the Content-Range header field (Section 14.4) as a request

modifier on PUT is allowed. (Section 9.3.4)

A superfluous requirement about setting Content-Length has been

removed from the description of the OPTIONS method. (Section 9.3.7)

The normative requirement to use the "message/http" media type in

TRACE responses has been removed. (Section 9.3.8)

List-based grammar for Expect has been restored for compatibility with
RFC 2616. (Section 10.1.1)

Accept and Accept-Encoding are allowed in response messages; the

latter was introduced by [RFC7694]. (Section 12.3)

"Accept Parameters" (accept-params and accept-ext ABNF production)

have been removed from the definition of the Accept field. (Section
12.5.1)

The Accept-Charset field is now deprecated. (Section 12.5.2)

The semantics of "*" in the Vary header field when other values are
present was clarified. (Section 12.5.5)

Range units are compared in a case-insensitive fashion. (Section 14.1)

The use of the Accept-Ranges field is not restricted to origin servers.

(Section 14.3)

The process of creating a redirected request has been clarified. (Section

15.4)

Status code 308 (previously defined in [RFC7538]) has been added so

that it's defined closer to status codes 301, 302, and 307. (Section 15.4.9)

Status code 421 (previously defined in Section 9.1.2 of [RFC7540]) has

been added because of its general applicability. 421 is no longer defined
as heuristically cacheable since the response is specific to the connection
(not the target resource). (Section 15.5.20)

Status code 422 (previously defined in Section 11.2 of [WEBDAV]) has

been added because of its general applicability. (Section 15.5.21)

B.4. Changes from RFC 7232

Previous revisions of HTTP imposed an arbitrary 60-second limit on the
determination of whether Last-Modified was a strong validator to guard
against the possibility that the Date and Last-Modified values are
generated from different clocks or at somewhat different times during
the preparation of the response. This specification has relaxed that to
allow reasonable discretion. (Section 8.8.2.2)

An edge-case requirement on If-Match and If-Unmodified-Since has

been removed that required a validator not to be sent in a 2xx response
if validation fails because the change request has already been applied.
(Sections 13.1.1 and 13.1.4)

The fact that If-Unmodified-Since does not apply to a resource without a

concept of modification time has been clarified. (Section 13.1.4)

Preconditions can now be evaluated before the request content is

processed rather than waiting until the response would otherwise be
successful. (Section 13.2)

B.5. Changes from RFC 7233

Refactored the range-unit and ranges-specifier grammars to simplify and
reduce artificial distinctions between bytes and other (extension) range
units, removing the overlapping grammar of other-range-unit by
defining range units generically as a token and placing extensions within
the scope of a range-spec (other-range). This disambiguates the role of
list syntax (commas) in all range sets, including extension range units, for
indicating a range-set of more than one range. Moving the extension
grammar into range specifiers also allows protocol specific to byte
ranges to be specified separately.

It is now possible to define Range handling on extension methods.

(Section 14.2)

Described use of the Content-Range header field (Section 14.4) as a

request modifier to perform a partial PUT. (Section 14.5)
B.6. Changes from RFC 7235
None.

B.7. Changes from RFC 7538

None.

B.8. Changes from RFC 7615

None.

B.9. Changes from RFC 7694

This specification includes the extension defined in [RFC7694] but leaves
out examples and deployment considerations.

Acknowledgements
Aside from the current editors, the following individuals deserve special
recognition for their contributions to early aspects of HTTP and its core
specifications: Marc Andreessen, Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Daniel
W. Connolly, Bob Denny, John Franks, Jim Gettys, Jean-François Groff,
Phillip M. Hallam-Baker, Koen Holtman, Jeffery L. Hostetler, Shel Kaphan,
Dave Kristol, Yves Lafon, Scott D. Lawrence, Paul J. Leach, Håkon W. Lie,
Ari Luotonen, Larry Masinter, Rob McCool, Jeffrey C. Mogul, Lou
Montulli, David Morris, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, Dave Raggett, Eric
Rescorla, Tony Sanders, Lawrence C. Stewart, Marc VanHeyningen, and
Steve Zilles.

This document builds on the many contributions that went into past
specifications of HTTP, including [HTTP/1.0], [RFC2068], [RFC2145],
[RFC2616], [RFC2617], [RFC2818], [RFC7230], [RFC7231], [RFC7232],
[RFC7233], [RFC7234], and [RFC7235]. The acknowledgements within
those documents still apply.

Since 2014, the following contributors have helped improve this

specification by reporting bugs, asking smart questions, drafting or
reviewing text, and evaluating issues:

Alan Egerton, Alex Rousskov, Amichai Rothman, Amos Jeffries, Anders

Kaseorg, Andreas Gebhardt, Anne van Kesteren, Armin Abfalterer, Aron
Duby, Asanka Herath, Asbjørn Ulsberg, Asta Olofsson, Attila Gulyas,
Austin Wright, Barry Pollard, Ben Burkert, Benjamin Kaduk, Björn
Höhrmann, Brad Fitzpatrick, Chris Pacejo, Colin Bendell, Cory Benfield,
Cory Nelson, Daisuke Miyakawa, Dale Worley, Daniel Stenberg, Danil
Suits, David Benjamin, David Matson, David Schinazi, Дилян Палаузов
(Dilyan Palauzov), Eric Anderson, Eric Rescorla, Éric Vyncke, Erik Kline,
Erwin Pe, Etan Kissling, Evert Pot, Evgeny Vrublevsky, Florian Best,
Francesca Palombini, Igor Lubashev, James Callahan, James Peach, Jeffrey
Yasskin, Kalin Gyokov, Kannan Goundan, 奥 一穂 (Kazuho Oku), Ken
Murchison, Krzysztof Maczyński, Lars Eggert, Lucas Pardue, Martin Duke,
Martin Dürst, Martin Thomson, Martynas Jusevičius, Matt Menke,
Matthias Pigulla, Mattias Grenfeldt, Michael Osipov, Mike Bishop, Mike
Pennisi, Mike Taylor, Mike West, Mohit Sethi, Murray Kucherawy,
Nathaniel J. Smith, Nicholas Hurley, Nikita Prokhorov, Patrick McManus,
Piotr Sikora, Poul-Henning Kamp, Rick van Rein, Robert Wilton, Roberto
Polli, Roman Danyliw, Samuel Williams, Semyon Kholodnov, Simon
Pieters, Simon Schüppel, Stefan Eissing, Taylor Hunt, Todd Greer, Tommy
Pauly, Vasiliy Faronov, Vladimir Lashchev, Wenbo Zhu, William A. Rowe
Jr., Willy Tarreau, Xingwei Liu, Yishuai Li, and Zaheduzzaman Sarker.

Index
12345ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPRSTUVWX

•1
◦ 100 Continue (status code) 15.2.1, 18.3
◦ 100-continue (expect value) 10.1.1
◦ 101 Switching Protocols (status code) 15.2.2, 18.3
◦ 1xx Informational (status code class) 15.2
•2
◦ 200 OK (status code) 15.3.1, 18.3
◦ 201 Created (status code) 15.3.2, 18.3
◦ 202 Accepted (status code) 15.3.3, 18.3
◦ 203 Non-Authoritative Information (status code) 7.7, 15.3.4,
18.3
◦ 204 No Content (status code) 15.3.5, 18.3
◦ 205 Reset Content (status code) 15.3.6, 18.3
◦ 206 Partial Content (status code) 6.4.1, 8.3.3, 14.2, 15.3.7, 18.3
◦ 2xx Successful (status code class) 15.3
•3
◦ 300 Multiple Choices (status code) 15.4.1, 15.5.7, 18.3
◦ 301 Moved Permanently (status code) 15.4.2, 18.3
 ◦ 302 Found (status code) 15.4.3, 18.3
◦ 303 See Other (status code) 15.4.4, 18.3
◦ 304 Not Modified (status code) 8.6, 15.4.5, 18.3
◦ 305 Use Proxy (status code) 15.4.6, 18.3
◦ 306 (Unused) (status code) 15.4.7, 18.3
◦ 307 Temporary Redirect (status code) 15.4.8, 18.3
◦ 308 Permanent Redirect (status code) 15.4.9, 18.3, B.3
◦ 3xx Redirection (status code class) 7.8, 15.4, 16.3.2, B.3
•4
◦ 400 Bad Request (status code) 15.5.1, 18.3
◦ 401 Unauthorized (status code) 15.5.2, 18.3
◦ 402 Payment Required (status code) 15.5.3, 18.3
◦ 403 Forbidden (status code) 11.4, 15.5.4, 18.3
◦ 404 Not Found (status code) 15.5.5, 18.3
◦ 405 Method Not Allowed (status code) 15.5.6, 18.3
◦ 406 Not Acceptable (status code) 15.5.7, 18.3
◦ 407 Proxy Authentication Required (status code) 15.5.8, 18.3
◦ 408 Request Timeout (status code) 15.5.9, 18.3
◦ 409 Conflict (status code) 15.5.10, 18.3
◦ 410 Gone (status code) 15.5.11, 18.3
◦ 411 Length Required (status code) 15.5.12, 18.3
◦ 412 Precondition Failed (status code) 15.5.13, 18.3
◦ 413 Content Too Large (status code) 15.5.14, 17.5, 18.3
◦ 414 URI Too Long (status code) 15.5.15, 17.5, 18.3
◦ 415 Unsupported Media Type (status code) 15.5.16, 18.3
◦ 416 Range Not Satisfiable (status code) 15.5.17, 18.3
◦ 417 Expectation Failed (status code) 15.5.18, 18.3
◦ 418 (Unused) (status code) 15.5.19, 18.3
◦ 421 Misdirected Request (status code) 7.4, 15.5.20, 18.3, B.3
◦ 422 Unprocessable Content (status code) 15.5.21, 18.3, B.3
◦ 426 Upgrade Required (status code) 15.5.22, 18.3
◦ 4xx Client Error (status code class) 15.5
•5
◦ 500 Internal Server Error (status code) 15.6.1, 18.3
◦ 501 Not Implemented (status code) 15.6.2, 18.3
◦ 502 Bad Gateway (status code) 15.6.3, 18.3
◦ 503 Service Unavailable (status code) 15.6.4, 18.3
◦ 504 Gateway Timeout (status code) 15.6.5, 18.3
 ◦ 505 HTTP Version Not Supported (status code) 15.6.6, 18.3
◦ 5xx Server Error (status code class) 15.6
•A
◦ accelerator 3.7
◦ Accept header field 5.6.6, 8.3.1, 12.3, 12.5.1, 15.5.16, 18.4, 18.8,
B.3
◦ Accept-Charset header field 12.5.2, 18.4, B.3
◦ Accept-Encoding header field 8.4.1, 8.8.3.3, 12.3, 12.5.3,
15.5.16, 18.4, 18.6
◦ Accept-Language header field 8.5.1, 12.5.4, 18.4
◦ Accept-Ranges header field 14.1, 14.3, 18.4, 18.7, B.3
◦ Allow header field 9.1, 10.2.1, 18.4
◦ ALTSVC 4.3.2, 15.5.20, 17.1, 19.2
◦ Authentication-Info header field 11.6.3, 18.4
◦ authoritative response 17.1
◦ Authorization header field 11.6.2, 11.6.3, 12.5.5, 15.5.2, 18.4
•B
◦ BREACH 17.6, 19.2
◦ browser 3.5
◦ Bujlow 17.13, 19.2
•C
◦ cache 3.8
◦ cacheable 3.8
◦ CACHING 1.2, 2.5, 3.8, 4.3.2, 4.3.3, 5.6.7, 7.3.1, 7.6.1, 7.7, 8.8.2.1,
8.8.3.1, 9.2.3, 9.3.1, 9.3.2, 9.3.2, 9.3.3, 9.3.3, 9.3.4, 9.3.5, 11.6.2,
12.5.5, 12.5.5, 13, 13.1.2, 13.1.3, 15.1, 15.3.1, 15.3.4, 15.3.5,
15.3.7, 15.4.1, 15.4.2, 15.4.5, 15.4.5, 15.4.9, 15.5.5, 15.5.6, 15.5.11,
15.5.15, 15.6.2, 16, 16.2.2, 16.4.2, 17, 17.2, 19.1
▪ Section 3.5 11.6.2
▪ Section 4 9.3.3
▪ Section 4.1 12.5.5
▪ Section 4.2 5.6.7
▪ Section 4.2.1 9.3.3
▪ Section 4.2.2 15.3.1, 15.3.4, 15.3.5, 15.3.7, 15.4.1, 15.4.2,
15.4.9, 15.5.5, 15.5.6, 15.5.11, 15.5.15, 15.6.2
▪ Section 4.3.2 13.1.2, 13.1.3
▪ Section 4.3.4 15.4.5
▪ Section 4.3.5 9.3.2
▪ Section 4.4 9.3.4, 9.3.5
 ▪ Section 5.2 7.6.1, 9.3.1, 9.3.2, 12.5.5
▪ Section 5.2.2.6 7.7
▪ Section 5.2.2.7 16.4.2
▪ Section 5.2.3 16
▪ Section 7 17, 17.2
◦ client 3.3
◦ clock 5.6.7
◦ complete 6.1
◦ compress (Coding Format) 8.4.1.1
◦ compress (content coding) 8.4.1
◦ conditional request 13
◦ CONNECT method 3.3, 6.4.1, 7.1, 8.6, 9.1, 9.3.6, 16, 16.1.2, 18.2
◦ connection 3.3
◦ Connection header field 5.1, 7.6, 7.6.1, 7.8, 10.1.4, 15.4, 16.3.2,
18.4
◦ content 6.4
◦ content coding 8.4.1
◦ content negotiation 1.3
◦ Content-Encoding header field 8.4, 8.4.1, 18.4
◦ Content-Language header field 8.5, 18.4
◦ Content-Length header field 8.6, 15.5.12, 18.4
◦ Content-Location header field 8.7, 9.3.3, 10.2.2, 18.4
◦ Content-MD5 header field 18.4
◦ Content-Range header field 9.3.4, 14.1, 14.4, 14.5, 14.5, 15.5.17,
18.4, B.3, B.5
◦ Content-Type header field 5.5, 8.3, 8.3.1, 18.4
◦ control data 6.2
◦ COOKIE 4.2.2, 5.3, 9.3.8, 11.4, 19.2
•D
◦ Date header field 5.1, 6.4.1, 6.6.1, 8.8.2.1, 18.4
◦ deflate (Coding Format) 8.4.1.2
◦ deflate (content coding) 8.4.1
◦ DELETE method 9.1, 9.2.2, 9.3.5, 18.2, B.3
◦ Delimiters 5.6.2
◦ downstream 3.7
•E
◦ effective request URI 7.1
◦ Err1912 8.3.2, 19.2
 ◦ Err5433 8.3.2, 19.2
◦ ETag field 8.8, 8.8.3, 18.4
◦ Expect header field 7.8, 10.1.1, 15.2.1, 15.5.18, 18.4, B.3
•F
◦ field 5, 6.3
◦ field line 5.2
◦ field line value 5.2
◦ field name 5.2
◦ field value 5.2
◦ Fields
▪ * 18.4
▪ Accept 5.6.6, 8.3.1, 12.3, 12.5.1, 15.5.16, 18.4, 18.8, B.3
▪ Accept-Charset 12.5.2, 18.4, B.3
▪ Accept-Encoding 8.4.1, 8.8.3.3, 12.3, 12.5.3, 15.5.16, 18.4,
18.6
▪ Accept-Language 8.5.1, 12.5.4, 18.4
▪ Accept-Ranges 14.1, 14.3, 18.4, 18.7, B.3
▪ Allow 9.1, 10.2.1, 18.4
▪ Authentication-Info 11.6.3, 18.4
▪ Authorization 11.6.2, 11.6.3, 12.5.5, 15.5.2, 18.4
▪ Connection 5.1, 7.6, 7.6.1, 7.8, 10.1.4, 15.4, 16.3.2, 18.4
▪ Content-Encoding 8.4, 8.4.1, 18.4
▪ Content-Language 8.5, 18.4
▪ Content-Length 8.6, 15.5.12, 18.4
▪ Content-Location 8.7, 9.3.3, 10.2.2, 18.4
▪ Content-MD5 18.4
▪ Content-Range 9.3.4, 14.1, 14.4, 14.5, 14.5, 15.5.17, 18.4,
B.3, B.5
▪ Content-Type 5.5, 8.3, 8.3.1, 18.4
▪ Date 5.1, 6.4.1, 6.6.1, 8.8.2.1, 18.4
▪ ETag 8.8, 8.8.3, 18.4
▪ Expect 7.8, 10.1.1, 15.2.1, 15.5.18, 18.4, B.3
▪ From 10.1.2, 18.4
▪ Host 4.3.3, 7.1, 7.2, 18.4, B.2
▪ If-Match 13.1.1, 13.2.2, 18.4, B.4
▪ If-Modified-Since 13.1.3, 18.4
▪ If-None-Match 13.1.2, 18.4
▪ If-Range 13.1.1, 13.1.4, 13.1.5, 14.2, 18.4
 ▪ If-Unmodified-Since 13.1.4, 13.2.2, 18.4, B.4, B.4
▪ Last-Modified 8.8, 8.8.2, 18.4
▪ Location 9.3.3, 10.2.2, 15.4, 17.11, 18.4
▪ Max-Forwards 7.6.2, 9.3.7, 9.3.8, 18.4
▪ Proxy-Authenticate 11.7.1, 15.5.8, 18.4
▪ Proxy-Authentication-Info 11.7.3, 18.4
▪ Proxy-Authorization 11.7.2, 11.7.3, 15.5.8, 18.4
▪ Range 9.3.1, 14.1, 14.2, 15.5.17, 16.1.2, 18.4, B.5
▪ Referer 10.1.3, 17.9, 18.4
▪ Retry-After 10.2.3, 15.6.4, 18.4
▪ Server 10.2.4, 17.12, 18.4
▪ TE 6.5.1, 7.6.1, 10.1.4, 18.4
▪ Trailer 6.5.2, 6.6.2, 18.4
▪ Upgrade 3.3, 7.6.1, 7.6.3, 7.8, 15.2.2, 15.5.22, 18.4
▪ User-Agent 10.1.5, 10.2.4, 17.12, 18.4
▪ Vary 12.1, 12.5.5, 16.3.2, 18.4, 18.4, 18.4, B.3
▪ Via 6.2, 7.6.3, 9.3.8, 17.12, 18.4, B.2
▪ WWW-Authenticate 11.6.1, 11.7.1, 15.5.2, 18.4
◦ Fragment Identifiers 4.2.5
◦ From header field 10.1.2, 18.4
•G
◦ gateway 3.7
◦ Georgiev 17.1, 19.2
◦ GET method 3.2, 3.9, 6, 6.4.1, 6.4.1, 8.7, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.1, 13.1.1,
13.1.4, 14.1.2, 14.1.2, 14.2, 18.2, B.3
◦ Grammar
▪ absolute-path 4.1
▪ absolute-URI 4.1
▪ Accept 12.5.1
▪ Accept-Charset 12.5.2
▪ Accept-Encoding 12.5.3
▪ Accept-Language 12.5.4
▪ Accept-Ranges 14.3
▪ acceptable-ranges 14.3
▪ Allow 10.2.1
▪ ALPHA 2.1
▪ asctime-date 5.6.7
▪ auth-param 11.2
▪ auth-scheme 11.1
▪ Authentication-Info 11.6.3
▪ authority 4.1
▪ Authorization 11.6.2
▪ BWS 5.6.3
▪ challenge 11.3
▪ codings 12.5.3
▪ comment 5.6.5
▪ complete-length 14.4
▪ Connection 7.6.1
▪ connection-option 7.6.1
▪ content-coding 8.4.1
▪ Content-Encoding 8.4
▪ Content-Language 8.5
▪ Content-Length 8.6
▪ Content-Location 8.7
▪ Content-Range 14.4
▪ Content-Type 8.3
▪ CR 2.1
▪ credentials 11.4
▪ CRLF 2.1
▪ ctext 5.6.5
▪ CTL 2.1
▪ Date 6.6.1
▪ date1 5.6.7
▪ day 5.6.7
▪ day-name 5.6.7
▪ day-name-l 5.6.7
▪ delay-seconds 10.2.3
▪ DIGIT 2.1
▪ DQUOTE 2.1
▪ entity-tag 8.8.3
▪ ETag 8.8.3
▪ etagc 8.8.3
▪ Expect 10.1.1
▪ field-content 5.5
▪ field-name 5.1, 6.6.2
▪ field-value 5.5
▪ field-vchar 5.5
▪ first-pos 14.1.1, 14.4
▪ From 10.1.2
▪ GMT 5.6.7
▪ HEXDIG 2.1
▪ Host 7.2
▪ hour 5.6.7
▪ HTAB 2.1
▪ HTTP-date 5.6.7
▪ http-URI 4.2.1
▪ https-URI 4.2.2
▪ If-Match 13.1.1
▪ If-Modified-Since 13.1.3
▪ If-None-Match 13.1.2
▪ If-Range 13.1.5
▪ If-Unmodified-Since 13.1.4
▪ IMF-fixdate 5.6.7
▪ incl-range 14.4
▪ int-range 14.1.1
▪ language-range 12.5.4
▪ language-tag 8.5.1
▪ Last-Modified 8.8.2
▪ last-pos 14.1.1, 14.4
▪ LF 2.1
▪ Location 10.2.2
▪ Max-Forwards 7.6.2
▪ media-range 12.5.1
▪ media-type 8.3.1
▪ method 9.1
▪ minute 5.6.7
▪ month 5.6.7
▪ obs-date 5.6.7
▪ obs-text 5.5
▪ OCTET 2.1
▪ opaque-tag 8.8.3
▪ other-range 14.1.1
▪ OWS 5.6.3
▪ parameter 5.6.6
▪ parameter-name 5.6.6
▪ parameter-value 5.6.6
▪ parameters 5.6.6
▪ partial-URI 4.1
▪ port 4.1
▪ product 10.1.5
▪ product-version 10.1.5
▪ protocol-name 7.6.3
▪ protocol-version 7.6.3
▪ Proxy-Authenticate 11.7.1
▪ Proxy-Authentication-Info 11.7.3
▪ Proxy-Authorization 11.7.2
▪ pseudonym 7.6.3
▪ qdtext 5.6.4
▪ query 4.1
▪ quoted-pair 5.6.4
▪ quoted-string 5.6.4
▪ qvalue 12.4.2
▪ Range 14.2
▪ range-resp 14.4
▪ range-set 14.1.1
▪ range-spec 14.1.1
▪ range-unit 14.1
▪ ranges-specifier 14.1.1
▪ received-by 7.6.3
▪ received-protocol 7.6.3
▪ Referer 10.1.3
▪ Retry-After 10.2.3
▪ rfc850-date 5.6.7
▪ RWS 5.6.3
▪ second 5.6.7
▪ segment 4.1
▪ Server 10.2.4
▪ SP 2.1
▪ subtype 8.3.1
▪ suffix-length 14.1.1
▪ suffix-range 14.1.1
▪ t-codings 10.1.4
 ▪ tchar 5.6.2
▪ TE 10.1.4
▪ time-of-day 5.6.7
▪ token 5.6.2
▪ token68 11.2
▪ Trailer 6.6.2
▪ transfer-coding 10.1.4
▪ transfer-parameter 10.1.4
▪ type 8.3.1
▪ unsatisfied-range 14.4
▪ Upgrade 7.8
▪ uri-host 4.1
▪ URI-reference 4.1
▪ User-Agent 10.1.5
▪ Vary 12.5.5
▪ VCHAR 2.1
▪ Via 7.6.3
▪ weak 8.8.3
▪ weight 12.4.2
▪ WWW-Authenticate 11.6.1
▪ year 5.6.7
◦ gzip (Coding Format) 8.4.1.3
◦ gzip (content coding) 8.4.1
•H
◦ HEAD method 6, 6.4.1, 8.6, 8.7, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.2, 18.2, B.3
◦ Header Fields
▪ Accept 5.6.6, 8.3.1, 12.3, 12.5.1, 15.5.16, 18.4, 18.8, B.3
▪ Accept-Charset 12.5.2, 18.4, B.3
▪ Accept-Encoding 8.4.1, 8.8.3.3, 12.3, 12.5.3, 15.5.16, 18.4,
18.6
▪ Accept-Language 8.5.1, 12.5.4, 18.4
▪ Accept-Ranges 14.1, 14.3, 18.4, 18.7, B.3
▪ Allow 9.1, 10.2.1, 18.4
▪ Authentication-Info 11.6.3, 18.4
▪ Authorization 11.6.2, 11.6.3, 12.5.5, 15.5.2, 18.4
▪ Connection 5.1, 7.6, 7.6.1, 7.8, 10.1.4, 15.4, 16.3.2, 18.4
▪ Content-Encoding 8.4, 8.4.1, 18.4
▪ Content-Language 8.5, 18.4
 ▪ Content-Length 8.6, 15.5.12, 18.4
▪ Content-Location 8.7, 9.3.3, 10.2.2, 18.4
▪ Content-MD5 18.4
▪ Content-Range 9.3.4, 14.1, 14.4, 14.5, 14.5, 15.5.17, 18.4,
B.3, B.5
▪ Content-Type 5.5, 8.3, 8.3.1, 18.4
▪ Date 5.1, 6.4.1, 6.6.1, 8.8.2.1, 18.4
▪ ETag 8.8, 8.8.3, 18.4
▪ Expect 7.8, 10.1.1, 15.2.1, 15.5.18, 18.4, B.3
▪ From 10.1.2, 18.4
▪ Host 4.3.3, 7.1, 7.2, 18.4, B.2
▪ If-Match 13.1.1, 13.2.2, 18.4, B.4
▪ If-Modified-Since 13.1.3, 18.4
▪ If-None-Match 13.1.2, 18.4
▪ If-Range 13.1.1, 13.1.4, 13.1.5, 14.2, 18.4
▪ If-Unmodified-Since 13.1.4, 13.2.2, 18.4, B.4, B.4
▪ Last-Modified 8.8, 8.8.2, 18.4
▪ Location 9.3.3, 10.2.2, 15.4, 17.11, 18.4
▪ Max-Forwards 7.6.2, 9.3.7, 9.3.8, 18.4
▪ Proxy-Authenticate 11.7.1, 15.5.8, 18.4
▪ Proxy-Authentication-Info 11.7.3, 18.4
▪ Proxy-Authorization 11.7.2, 11.7.3, 15.5.8, 18.4
▪ Range 9.3.1, 14.1, 14.2, 15.5.17, 16.1.2, 18.4, B.5
▪ Referer 10.1.3, 17.9, 18.4
▪ Retry-After 10.2.3, 15.6.4, 18.4
▪ Server 10.2.4, 17.12, 18.4
▪ TE 6.5.1, 7.6.1, 10.1.4, 18.4
▪ Trailer 6.5.2, 6.6.2, 18.4
▪ Upgrade 3.3, 7.6.1, 7.6.3, 7.8, 15.2.2, 15.5.22, 18.4
▪ User-Agent 10.1.5, 10.2.4, 17.12, 18.4
▪ Vary 12.1, 12.5.5, 16.3.2, 18.4, 18.4, 18.4, B.3
▪ Via 6.2, 7.6.3, 9.3.8, 17.12, 18.4, B.2
▪ WWW-Authenticate 11.6.1, 11.7.1, 15.5.2, 18.4
◦ header section 6.3
◦ Host header field 4.3.3, 7.1, 7.2, 18.4, B.2
◦ HPACK 17.6, 19.2
◦ http URI scheme 4.2.1
◦ HTTP/1.0 1.2, 15.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
 ▪ Section 9.3 15.4
◦ HTTP/1.1 1.2, 1.4, 2.5, 5.4, 6.2, 6.4, 6.5.1, 7.1, 7.5, 7.6.1, 7.6.1, 7.7,
7.7, 7.7, 8.4, 8.6, 8.8.3.3, 9.3.1, 9.3.2, 9.3.5, 9.3.8, 10.1.1, 10.1.4, 16,
17, 17.10, 19.2, B.3
▪ Section 3.2.1 7.7
▪ Section 3.2.4 7.7
▪ Section 6 6.4
▪ Section 6.1 7.6.1, 8.4, 16
▪ Section 6.2 8.6
▪ Section 7 7.7, 8.8.3.3, 10.1.4
▪ Section 7.1.2 6.5.1
▪ Section 9.5 7.5
▪ Section 9.6 10.1.1
▪ Section 10.1 9.3.8
▪ Section 11 17
▪ Section 11.2 5.4, 9.3.1, 9.3.2, 9.3.5, 17.10
▪ Appendix C.2.2 7.6.1
◦ HTTP/2 1.2, 6.2, 7.2, 7.5, 16, 19.2
◦ HTTP/3 1.2, 6.2, 7.2, 19.2
◦ https URI scheme 4.2.2
•I
◦ idempotent 9.2.2
◦ If-Match header field 13.1.1, 13.2.2, 18.4, B.4
◦ If-Modified-Since header field 13.1.3, 18.4
◦ If-None-Match header field 13.1.2, 18.4
◦ If-Range header field 13.1.1, 13.1.4, 13.1.5, 14.2, 18.4
◦ If-Unmodified-Since header field 13.1.4, 13.2.2, 18.4, B.4, B.4
◦ inbound 3.7
◦ incomplete 6.1
◦ interception proxy 3.7
◦ intermediary 3.7
◦ ISO-8859-1 5.5, 19.2
•K
◦ Kri2001 5.3, 19.2
•L
◦ Last-Modified header field 8.8, 8.8.2, 18.4
◦ list-based field 5.5
◦ Location header field 9.3.3, 10.2.2, 15.4, 17.11, 18.4
•M
◦ Max-Forwards header field 7.6.2, 9.3.7, 9.3.8, 18.4
◦ Media Type
▪ multipart/byteranges 14.6
▪ multipart/x-byteranges 14.6
◦ message 3.4, 6
◦ message abstraction 6
◦ messages 3.4
◦ metadata 8.8
◦ Method
▪ * 18.2
▪ CONNECT 3.3, 6.4.1, 7.1, 8.6, 9.1, 9.3.6, 16, 16.1.2, 18.2
▪ DELETE 9.1, 9.2.2, 9.3.5, 18.2, B.3
▪ GET 3.2, 3.9, 6, 6.4.1, 6.4.1, 8.7, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.1, 13.1.1,
13.1.4, 14.1.2, 14.1.2, 14.2, 18.2, B.3
▪ HEAD 6, 6.4.1, 8.6, 8.7, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.2, 18.2, B.3
▪ OPTIONS 7.1, 7.6.2, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.7, 16.1.2, 18.2, B.3
▪ POST 6.4.1, 8.7, 9.1, 9.3.1, 9.3.3, 18.2
▪ PUT 6.4.1, 8.7, 9.1, 9.2.2, 9.3.4, 14.5, 15.3.1, 15.3.2, 16.3.2,
18.2, B.3
▪ TRACE 7.6.2, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.8, 18.2, B.3
◦ multipart/byteranges Media Type 14.6
◦ multipart/x-byteranges Media Type 14.6
•N
◦ non-transforming proxy 7.7
•O
◦ OPTIONS method 7.1, 7.6.2, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.7, 16.1.2, 18.2, B.3
◦ origin 4.3.1, 11.5
◦ origin server 3.6
◦ outbound 3.7
◦ OWASP 17, 17.16, 19.2
•P
◦ phishing 17.1
◦ POST method 6.4.1, 8.7, 9.1, 9.3.1, 9.3.3, 18.2
◦ Protection Space 11.5
◦ proxy 3.7
◦ Proxy-Authenticate header field 11.7.1, 15.5.8, 18.4
◦ Proxy-Authentication-Info header field 11.7.3, 18.4
 ◦ Proxy-Authorization header field 11.7.2, 11.7.3, 15.5.8, 18.4
◦ PUT method 6.4.1, 8.7, 9.1, 9.2.2, 9.3.4, 14.5, 15.3.1, 15.3.2,
16.3.2, 18.2, B.3
•R
◦ Range header field 9.3.1, 14.1, 14.2, 15.5.17, 16.1.2, 18.4, B.5
◦ Realm 11.5
◦ recipient 3.4
◦ Referer header field 10.1.3, 17.9, 18.4
◦ representation 3.2
◦ request 3.4
◦ request target 7.1
◦ resource 3.1, 4
◦ response 3.4
◦ REST 3.2, 9.1, 19.2
◦ Retry-After header field 10.2.3, 15.6.4, 18.4
◦ reverse proxy 3.7
◦ RFC1919 3.7, 19.2
◦ RFC1950 8.4.1.2, 18.6, 19.1
◦ RFC1951 8.4.1.2, 18.6, 19.1
◦ RFC1952 8.4.1.3, 18.6, 19.1
◦ RFC2046 8.3, 8.3.1, 8.3.1, 8.3.3, 14.6, 14.6, 19.1
▪ Section 4.1.2 8.3.1
▪ Section 4.5.1 8.3
▪ Section 5.1 14.6
▪ Section 5.1.1 8.3.3
◦ RFC2047 5.5, 19.2
◦ RFC2068 1.2, 7.6.1, 15.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
▪ Section 10.3 15.4
▪ Section 19.7.1 7.6.1
◦ RFC2119 2.2, 19.1
◦ RFC2145 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC2295 12, 19.2
◦ RFC2324 15.5.19, 19.2
◦ RFC2557 8.7, 19.2
▪ Section 4 8.7
◦ RFC2616 1.2, 8.8.3, 12.5.4, 18.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
▪ Section 3.11 8.8.3
▪ Section 14.4 12.5.4
 ▪ Section 14.15 18.4
◦ RFC2617 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC2774 16.1.2, 19.2
◦ RFC2818 1.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC2978 8.3.2, 8.3.2, 19.2
▪ Section 2 8.3.2
▪ Section 2.3 8.3.2
◦ RFC3040 3.7, 19.2
◦ RFC3864 18.4, 19.2
◦ RFC3875 17.10, 19.2
▪ Section 4.1.18 17.10
◦ RFC4033 17.1, 19.2
◦ RFC4289 §
◦ RFC4559 3.3, 19.2
◦ RFC4647 12.5.4, 12.5.4, 12.5.4, 12.5.4, 19.1, A
▪ Section 2.1 12.5.4, A
▪ Section 2.3 12.5.4
▪ Section 3 12.5.4
▪ Section 3.3.1 12.5.4
◦ RFC4648 11.2, 19.1
◦ RFC5234 2.1, 2.1, 5.5, 5.6.1, 19.1
▪ Appendix B.1 2.1
◦ RFC5280 4.3.5, 19.1
▪ Section 4.2.1.6 4.3.5
◦ RFC5322 5.6.7, 5.6.7, 5.6.7, 6.6.1, 7.6.3, 10.1.2, 10.1.2, 19.1, A
▪ Section 3.3 5.6.7, 5.6.7
▪ Section 3.4 10.1.2, 10.1.2, A
▪ Section 3.6.1 6.6.1
▪ Section 3.6.7 7.6.3
◦ RFC5646 8.5.1, 8.5.1, 8.5.1, 19.1, A
▪ Section 2.1 8.5.1, A
◦ RFC5789 12.3, 14.5, 19.2
▪ Section 3.1 12.3
◦ RFC5905 5.6.7, 19.2
◦ RFC6125 4.3.4, 4.3.4, 19.1
▪ Section 6 4.3.4
▪ Section 6.2.1 4.3.4
◦ RFC6365 2.1, 8.3.2, 19.1
 ◦ RFC6454 4.3.1, 19.2
◦ RFC6585 17.5, 19.2
◦ RFC6648 §
◦ RFC6838 §
◦ RFC7230 1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC7231 1.4, 15.4.6, 18.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
▪ Appendix B 15.4.6, 18.4
◦ RFC7232 1.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC7233 1.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC7234 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC7235 1.2, 1.4, 19.2, "Acknowledgements"
◦ RFC7405 2.1, 19.1
◦ RFC7538 1.4, 15.4, 15.4.9, 19.2, B.3
▪ Section 4 15.4.9
◦ RFC7540 19.2, B.3
◦ RFC7578 8.3.3, 19.2
◦ RFC7595 §
◦ RFC7615 1.4, 19.2
◦ RFC7616 11.1, 11.6.3, 19.2
▪ Section 3.5 11.6.3
◦ RFC7617 11.1, 19.2
◦ RFC7694 1.4, 19.2, B.3, B.9
◦ RFC8126 16.1.1, 16.2.1, 16.3.1, 16.4.1, 16.5.1, 16.6.1, 16.7, 19.2
▪ Section 4.4 16.7
▪ Section 4.6 16.3.1
▪ Section 4.8 16.1.1, 16.2.1, 16.4.1, 16.5.1, 16.6.1
◦ RFC8174 2.2, 19.1
◦ RFC8187 5.5, 19.2
◦ RFC8246 13.2.1, 19.2
◦ RFC8288 15.4.1, 19.2
◦ RFC8336 4.3.3, 17.1, 19.2
◦ RFC8615 16.3, 19.2
◦ RFC8941 16.3.2.2, 16.3.2.2, 19.2
•S
◦ safe 9.2.1
◦ satisfiable range 14.1.1
◦ secured 4.2.2
◦ selected representation 3.2, 8.8, 13.1
 ◦ self-descriptive 6
◦ sender 3.4
◦ server 3.3
◦ Server header field 10.2.4, 17.12, 18.4
◦ singleton field 5.5
◦ Sniffing 8.3, 19.2
◦ spider 3.5
◦ Status Code 15
◦ Status Codes
▪ Final 15
▪ Informational 15
▪ Interim 15
◦ Status Codes Classes
▪ 1xx Informational 15.2
▪ 2xx Successful 15.3
▪ 3xx Redirection 7.8, 15.4, 16.3.2, B.3
▪ 4xx Client Error 15.5
▪ 5xx Server Error 15.6
•T
◦ target resource 7.1
◦ target URI 7.1
◦ TCP 4.2.1, 19.1
◦ TE header field 6.5.1, 7.6.1, 10.1.4, 18.4
◦ TLS13 3.7, 4.2.2, 9.3.6, 19.1
◦ TRACE method 7.6.2, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.3.8, 18.2, B.3
◦ Trailer Fields 6.5
▪ ETag 8.8, 8.8.3, 18.4
◦ Trailer header field 6.5.2, 6.6.2, 18.4
◦ trailer section 6.5
◦ trailers 6.5
◦ transforming proxy 7.7
◦ transparent proxy 3.7
◦ tunnel 3.7
•U
◦ unsatisfiable range 14.1.1
◦ Upgrade header field 3.3, 7.6.1, 7.6.3, 7.8, 15.2.2, 15.5.22, 18.4
◦ upstream 3.7
◦ URI 4
 ▪ origin 4.3.1
◦ URI 3.1, 4, 4.1, 4.1, 4.1, 4.1, 4.1, 4.1, 4.1, 4.1, 4.1, 4.2.1, 4.2.1,
4.2.2, 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.3, 4.2.3, 4.2.3, 4.2.3, 4.2.3, 4.2.4, 4.2.5, 4.2.5,
4.3.5, 7.1, 8.7, 9.3.1, 10.1.3, 10.1.3, 10.2.2, 10.2.2, 11.2, 17, 19.1, A,
A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, B.2
▪ Section 2.1 4.2.3
▪ Section 2.2 4.2.3
▪ Section 3.2 4.1, A
▪ Section 3.2.1 4.2.4
▪ Section 3.2.2 4.1, 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.3.5, A
▪ Section 3.2.3 4.1, 4.2.1, 4.2.2, A
▪ Section 3.3 4.1, 4.1, A, A
▪ Section 3.4 4.1, A
▪ Section 3.5 4.2.5, 7.1
▪ Section 4.1 4.1, A
▪ Section 4.2 4.1, 10.2.2, A
▪ Section 4.3 4.1, 4.2.5, A
▪ Section 5 8.7, 10.1.3, 10.2.2
▪ Section 6 4.2.3
▪ Section 6.2 4.2.3
▪ Section 6.2.3 4.2.3
▪ Section 7 17
◦ URI reference 4.1
◦ URI scheme
▪ http 4.2.1
▪ https 4.2.2
◦ USASCII 5.5, 19.1
◦ user agent 3.5
◦ User-Agent header field 10.1.5, 10.2.4, 17.12, 18.4
•V
◦ validator 8.8
▪ strong 8.8.1
▪ weak 8.8.1
◦ Vary header field 12.1, 12.5.5, 16.3.2, 18.4, 18.4, 18.4, B.3
◦ Via header field 6.2, 7.6.3, 9.3.8, 17.12, 18.4, B.2
•W
◦ WEBDAV 8.8, 13.1, 19.2, B.3
▪ Section 10.4 13.1
▪ Section 11.2 B.3
 ◦ Welch 8.4.1.1, 18.6, 19.1
◦ WWW-Authenticate header field 11.6.1, 11.7.1, 15.5.2, 18.4
•X
◦ x-compress (content coding) 8.4.1
◦ x-gzip (content coding) 8.4.1

Authors' Addresses
Roy T. Fielding (editor)
Adobe
345 Park Ave
San Jose, CA 95110
United States of America
Email: [email protected]
URI: https://roy.gbiv.com/

Mark Nottingham (editor)

Fastly
Prahran
Australia
Email: [email protected]
URI: https://www.mnot.net/

Julian Reschke (editor)

greenbytes GmbH
Hafenweg 16
48155 Münster
Germany
Email: [email protected]
URI: https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/