IPP> Chunked POST

IPP> Chunked POST

Michael Sweet mike at easysw.com
Wed Dec 16 17:19:30 EST 1998


Carl Kugler wrote:
> ...
> Many http server implementors seem to have interpreted the
> combination of these requirements to imply that a POST request
> without a Content-Length HTTP header cannot have a message-body. 
> Which further implies that a POST using Transfer-Encoding: chunked
> cannot have a message-body.  Indeed, I have tried several commercial
> ...

Yup, we ran into this, too.  The solution with our HTTP server
"engine" was to send chunked POST data to a file and then set the
CONTENT_TYPE environment variable to the final data/request size.
This is probably what Acme and Jigsaw do.

IIRC, POST != CGI, as CGI is just one possible content type.

> ...
> 1.  No spec changes.  HTTP/1.1 servers that don't support chunked
> POSTs are considered broken, and have to be fixed to buffer a
> chunked request message-body in order to generate a CONTENT_LENGTH. 

How many IPP implementers are using an existing HTTP server?

> This works in theory, but is impractical because system resources
> are limited and there is no guarantee the server can buffer all of
> the chunked data.

Certainly not in memory, but you're gonna need to have the request
stored someplace to handle queueing of multiple jobs anyways.

> It's also inefficient.  For example, for IPP with chunked encoding,
> the printer could begin printing a job while the request is still
> arriving if the request didn't have to be buffered in the http
> server.

Will HTTP servers in printers need to handle a normal CGI interface,
or will everything be handled by internal "functions"?  If the latter
then the whole chunked POST issue isn't important.

> 2.  Change CGI spec to remove dependency on CONTENT_LENGTH (and
> change http servers accordingly).

This has the potential for breaking a lot of CGIs that expect to see a
CONTENT_LENGTH environment variable (assuming we get true HTTP/1.1
browsers anytime soon).  Also, if you do a POST with a Content-Type
of application/ipp (instead of application/x-cgi?), are you even
following the CGI spec at all?

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products                  mike at easysw.com
Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com



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