We agreed at today's telecon to require that IPP servers MUST support
chunked POST methods. The [IPP-PRO] will make that requirement, along with
the requirement that IPP clients MUST accept chunked responses. How does
this sound for the Implementer's Guide:
3.6.2 Warning About the Support of Chunked Requests
This section describes some problems with the use of chunked requests and
HTTP/1.1 servers.
The HTTP/1.1 standard [HTTP] requires that conforming servers support
chunked requests for any method. However, in spite of this requirement,
some HTTP/1.1 implementations support chunked responses in the GET method,
but do not support chunked POST method requests. Some HTTP/1.1
implementations that support CGI scripts [CGI] and/or servlets [Servlet]
require that the client supply a Content-Length. These implementations MAY
reject a chunked POST method and return a 411 status code (Length Required),
MAY attempt to buffer the request and run out of room returning a 413 status
code (Request Entity Too Large), or MAY successfully accept the chunked
request.
Because of this lack of conformance of HTTP servers to the HTTP/1.1
standard, the IPP standard [IPP-PRO] REQUIRES that a conforming IPP Printer
object implementation support chunked requests and that conforming clients
accept chunked responses. Therefore, IPP object implementers are warned to
seek HTTP server implementations that support chunked POST requests in order
to conform to the IPP standard and/or use implementation techniques that
support chunked POST requests.
Ok? Send any comments this week.
Tom Hastings
(310) 333-6413