[Python-Dev] Remove HTTP 0.9 support

Thu Dec 16 17:52:14 CET 2010

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 02:20:37PM +0100, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> > > Try e.g. www.mozilla.org or www.google.com or www.msn.com.
> > > (but www.python.org or www.apache.org still have the legacy behaviour)
> > 
> > What legacy behavior did you observe in these?
> 
> -> Request:
> xyzzy
> 
> -> Response:
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
> (notice how the response has no headers)
> 

Well, Error response without headers was observed in www.mozilla.org
and www.google.com for Invalid requests.

But, I observed something surprising at www.apache.org
If you do GET / HTTP/1.0
You do get the valid Response with headers.

But if you do GET /
You get a valid response Without headers.

I was afraid if this behavior was to support HTTP 0.9 style where the
the reponse is sent without the headers.

Actually, it is turning out to be true:

http://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/rfc1945.html#Response

According to HTTP 1.0, When a request is Simple-Request, it means a
VERB URL (without a version) and it generally corresponds to HTTP 0.9
And when a server receives such a Simple-Request, it sends a
Simple-Response where it does not send the headers back.

I think, the same is exhibited by other Servers as well
www.google.com, www.mozilla.org where for Invalid Request without
version, you are sending a Simple-Request (HTTP 0.9) style and getting
the corresponding response.

Given these, any assumption that servers no longer support HTTP/0.9
becomes false. So nuking it will require some thought.

-- 
Senthil

-- 