Subject: Interpretation of Request-URI Definition

From: "Deschenes, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 18:27:48 +0000

I'm having some trouble interpreting the definition of Request-URI in
section 5.1.2 of RFC 2616.  It seems to me that the definition allows
nonsensical request URIs like ftp://myserver.com/.  Is it fair to say
that, in practice, the definition of Request-URI is as follows
(definition of http_URL is taken directly from section 3.2.2 of RFC
2616)?

	Request-URI = "*" | http_URL | abs_path [ "?" query ]

Also, is the definition of http_URL in section 3.2.2 to be taken as the
definition of the HTTP URI scheme?

Regards,
David Deschenes
System Developer
EXTOL International

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From: "Alex Rousskov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 11:35:57 -0600

On Thu, 2005/05/19 (MDT), <[email-masked]> wrote:

> nonsensical request URIs like ftp://myserver.com/.

The above is a valid URI, used in HTTP requests to an HTTP proxy capable
of working as an FTP-to-HTTP "translator". Most popular HTTP proxies can
do that kind of translation. AFAIK, when you configure an FTP proxy in
your browser, it would use the HTTP protocol and the URLs like the above
to fetch FTP resources. (Pure FTP proxying is barely possible and is not
widely used.)

HTH,

Alex.