RFC 2616 Outline

Links to corresponding section in partitioned drafts

• 1.   Introduction
  • 1.1   Purpose
  • 1.2   Requirements
  • 1.3   Terminology
  • 1.4   Overall Operation
• 2.   Notational Conventions and Generic Grammar
  • 2.1   Augmented BNF
  • 2.2   Basic Rules
• 3.   Protocol Parameters
  • 3.1   HTTP Version
  • 3.2   Uniform Resource Identifiers
    • 3.2.1   General Syntax
    • 3.2.2   http URL
    • 3.2.3   URI Comparison
  • 3.3   Date/Time Formats
    • 3.3.1   Full Date
    • 3.3.2   Delta Seconds
  • 3.4   Character Sets
    • 3.4.1   Missing Charset
  • 3.5   Content Codings
  • 3.6   Transfer Codings
    • 3.6.1   Chunked Transfer Coding
  • 3.7   Media Types
    • 3.7.1   Canonicalization and Text Defaults
    • 3.7.2   Multipart Types
  • 3.8   Product Tokens
  • 3.9   Quality Values
  • 3.10   Language Tags
  • 3.11   Entity Tags
  • 3.12   Range Units
• 4.   HTTP Message
  • 4.1   Message Types
  • 4.2   Message Headers
  • 4.3   Message Body
  • 4.4   Message Length
  • 4.5   General Header Fields
• 5.   Request
  • 5.1   Request-Line
    • 5.1.1   Method
    • 5.1.2   Request-URI
  • 5.2   The Resource Identified by a Request
  • 5.3   Request Header Fields
• 6.   Response
  • 6.1   Status-Line
    • 6.1.1   Status Code and Reason Phrase
  • 6.2   Response Header Fields
• 7.   Entity
  • 7.1   Entity Header Fields
  • 7.2   Entity Body
    • 7.2.1   Type
    • 7.2.2   Entity Length
• 8.   Connections
  • 8.1   Persistent Connections
    • 8.1.1   Purpose
    • 8.1.2   Overall Operation
      • 8.1.2.1   Negotiation
      • 8.1.2.2   Pipelining
    • 8.1.3   Proxy Servers
    • 8.1.4   Practical Considerations
  • 8.2   Message Transmission Requirements
    • 8.2.1   Persistent Connections and Flow Control
    • 8.2.2   Monitoring Connections for Error Status Messages
    • 8.2.3   Use of the 100 (Continue) Status
    • 8.2.4   Client Behavior if Server Prematurely Closes Connection
• 9.   Method Definitions
  • 9.1   Safe and Idempotent Methods
    • 9.1.1   Safe Methods
    • 9.1.2   Idempotent Methods
  • 9.2   OPTIONS
  • 9.3   GET
  • 9.4   HEAD
  • 9.5   POST
  • 9.6   PUT
  • 9.7   DELETE
  • 9.8   TRACE
  • 9.9   CONNECT
• 10.   Status Code Definitions
  • 10.1   Informational 1xx
    • 10.1.1   100 Continue
    • 10.1.2   101 Switching Protocols
  • 10.2   Successful 2xx
    • 10.2.1   200 OK
    • 10.2.2   201 Created
    • 10.2.3   202 Accepted
    • 10.2.4   203 Non-Authoritative Information
    • 10.2.5   204 No Content
    • 10.2.6   205 Reset Content
    • 10.2.7   206 Partial Content
  • 10.3   Redirection 3xx
    • 10.3.1   300 Multiple Choices
    • 10.3.2   301 Moved Permanently
    • 10.3.3   302 Found
    • 10.3.4   303 See Other
    • 10.3.5   304 Not Modified
    • 10.3.6   305 Use Proxy
    • 10.3.7   306 (Unused)
    • 10.3.8   307 Temporary Redirect
  • 10.4   Client Error 4xx
    • 10.4.1   400 Bad Request
    • 10.4.2   401 Unauthorized
    • 10.4.3   402 Payment Required
    • 10.4.4   403 Forbidden
    • 10.4.5   404 Not Found
    • 10.4.6   405 Method Not Allowed
    • 10.4.7   406 Not Acceptable
    • 10.4.8   407 Proxy Authentication Required
    • 10.4.9   408 Request Timeout
    • 10.4.10   409 Conflict
    • 10.4.11   410 Gone
    • 10.4.12   411 Length Required
    • 10.4.13   412 Precondition Failed
    • 10.4.14   413 Request Entity Too Large
    • 10.4.15   414 Request-URI Too Long
    • 10.4.16   415 Unsupported Media Type
    • 10.4.17   416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable
    • 10.4.18   417 Expectation Failed
  • 10.5   Server Error 5xx
    • 10.5.1   500 Internal Server Error
    • 10.5.2   501 Not Implemented
    • 10.5.3   502 Bad Gateway
    • 10.5.4   503 Service Unavailable
    • 10.5.5   504 Gateway Timeout
    • 10.5.6   505 HTTP Version Not Supported
• 11.   Access Authentication
• 12.   Content Negotiation
  • 12.1   Server-driven Negotiation
  • 12.2   Agent-driven Negotiation
  • 12.3   Transparent Negotiation
• 13.   Caching in HTTP
  • 13.1   Overview
    • 13.1.1   Cache Correctness
    • 13.1.2   Warnings
    • 13.1.3   Cache-control Mechanisms
    • 13.1.4   Explicit User Agent Warnings
    • 13.1.5   Exceptions to the Rules and Warnings
    • 13.1.6   Client-controlled Behavior
  • 13.2   Expiration Model
    • 13.2.1   Server-Specified Expiration
    • 13.2.2   Heuristic Expiration
    • 13.2.3   Age Calculations
    • 13.2.4   Expiration Calculations
    • 13.2.5   Disambiguating Expiration Values
    • 13.2.6   Disambiguating Multiple Responses
  • 13.3   Validation Model
    • 13.3.1   Last-Modified Dates
    • 13.3.2   Entity Tag Cache Validators
    • 13.3.3   Weak and Strong Validators
    • 13.3.4   Rules for When to Use Entity Tags and Last-Modified Dates
    • 13.3.5   Non-validating Conditionals
  • 13.4   Response Cacheability
  • 13.5   Constructing Responses From Caches
    • 13.5.1   End-to-end and Hop-by-hop Headers
    • 13.5.2   Non-modifiable Headers
    • 13.5.3   Combining Headers
    • 13.5.4   Combining Byte Ranges
  • 13.6   Caching Negotiated Responses
  • 13.7   Shared and Non-Shared Caches
  • 13.8   Errors or Incomplete Response Cache Behavior
  • 13.9   Side Effects of GET and HEAD
  • 13.10   Invalidation After Updates or Deletions
  • 13.11   Write-Through Mandatory
  • 13.12   Cache Replacement
  • 13.13   History Lists
• 14.   Header Field Definitions
  • 14.1   Accept
  • 14.2   Accept-Charset
  • 14.3   Accept-Encoding
  • 14.4   Accept-Language
  • 14.5   Accept-Ranges
  • 14.6   Age
  • 14.7   Allow
  • 14.8   Authorization
  • 14.9   Cache-Control
    • 14.9.1   What is Cacheable
    • 14.9.2   What May be Stored by Caches
    • 14.9.3   Modifications of the Basic Expiration Mechanism
    • 14.9.4   Cache Revalidation and Reload Controls
    • 14.9.5   No-Transform Directive
    • 14.9.6   Cache Control Extensions
  • 14.10   Connection
  • 14.11   Content-Encoding
  • 14.12   Content-Language
  • 14.13   Content-Length
  • 14.14   Content-Location
  • 14.15   Content-MD5
  • 14.16   Content-Range
  • 14.17   Content-Type
  • 14.18   Date
    • 14.18.1   Clockless Origin Server Operation
  • 14.19   ETag
  • 14.20   Expect
  • 14.21   Expires
  • 14.22   From
  • 14.23   Host
  • 14.24   If-Match
  • 14.25   If-Modified-Since
  • 14.26   If-None-Match
  • 14.27   If-Range
  • 14.28   If-Unmodified-Since
  • 14.29   Last-Modified
  • 14.30   Location
  • 14.31   Max-Forwards
  • 14.32   Pragma
  • 14.33   Proxy-Authenticate
  • 14.34   Proxy-Authorization
  • 14.35   Range
    • 14.35.1   Byte Ranges
    • 14.35.2   Range Retrieval Requests
  • 14.36   Referer
  • 14.37   Retry-After
  • 14.38   Server
  • 14.39   TE
  • 14.40   Trailer
  • 14.41   Transfer-Encoding
  • 14.42   Upgrade
  • 14.43   User-Agent
  • 14.44   Vary
  • 14.45   Via
  • 14.46   Warning
  • 14.47   WWW-Authenticate
• 15.   Security Considerations
  • 15.1   Personal Information
    • 15.1.1   Abuse of Server Log Information
    • 15.1.2   Transfer of Sensitive Information
    • 15.1.3   Encoding Sensitive Information in URI's
    • 15.1.4   Privacy Issues Connected to Accept Headers
  • 15.2   Attacks Based On File and Path Names
  • 15.3   DNS Spoofing
  • 15.4   Location Headers and Spoofing
  • 15.5   Content-Disposition Issues
  • 15.6   Authentication Credentials and Idle Clients
  • 15.7   Proxies and Caching
    • 15.7.1   Denial of Service Attacks on Proxies
• 16.   Acknowledgments
• 17.   References
• 18.   Authors' Addresses
• 19.   Appendices
  • 19.1   Internet Media Type message/http and application/http
  • 19.2   Internet Media Type multipart/byteranges
  • 19.3   Tolerant Applications
  • 19.4   Differences Between HTTP Entities and RFC 2045 Entities
    • 19.4.1   MIME-Version
    • 19.4.2   Conversion to Canonical Form
    • 19.4.3   Conversion of Date Formats
    • 19.4.4   Introduction of Content-Encoding
    • 19.4.5   No Content-Transfer-Encoding
    • 19.4.6   Introduction of Transfer-Encoding
    • 19.4.7   MHTML and Line Length Limitations
  • 19.5   Additional Features
    • 19.5.1   Content-Disposition
  • 19.6   Compatibility with Previous Versions
    • 19.6.1   Changes from HTTP/1.0
      • 19.6.1.1   Changes to Simplify Multi-homed Web Servers and Conserve IP Addresses
    • 19.6.2   Compatibility with HTTP/1.0 Persistent Connections
    • 19.6.3   Changes from RFC 2068
• 20.   Index