[Python-Dev] [Python-ideas] Proposed addtion to urllib.parse in 3.1 (and urlparse in 2.7)

[Bill Janssen]

Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

> Bill Janssen <janssen <at> parc.com> writes:
> > 
> > Sure.  And if HTTP was all about browsers keying off pages, that would
> > be fine with me.  But it's not.  HTTP is used in lots of places where
> > there are no browsers;
> 
> I'm sorry, I don't follow you. The fact that something else than a browser makes
> the request shouldn't change the behaviour on the /server/ side.

I'm talking about the client side, though.

> > It's used in
> > places where there are no "pages", too, just servers on which clients
> > are making REST-style calls.
> 
> So what? The designer of the REST API must mandate an encoding (most probably
> UTF-8 rather than Latin-1 as you bizarrely seemed to imply) and the problem is
> solved.

Sure, if they understand that they have to do it.

> Complaining that the RFC doesn't specify all this sounds like an excuse for
> programmer laziness.

Or incompetence, which I'm afraid is a more likely issue.  Lots of folks
write their own HTTP servers, and don't really understand just *what*
they need to specify.  As a client-side user of one of those servers,
I'm left in the dark.

I think we've beat this to death for python-dev.  Feel free to continue
it on Web-SIG, though, if you wish.

Bill