At Tue, 1 Jun 2010 14:21:56 -0400,
LeVan,Ralph wrote:
> 
> I've been sensing a flaw in HTTP for some time now.  It seems like you
> ought to be able to do everything through a URL that you can using a
> complete interface to HTTP.  Specifically, I'd love to be able to
> specify values for HTTP headers in a URL.
> 
> To plug that gap locally, I'm looking for a java servlet filter that
> will look for query parameters in a URL, recognize that some of them are
> HTTP Headers, strip the query parms and set those Headers in the request
> that my java servlet eventually gets.
>
> Does such a filter exist already?  I've looked and not been able to find
> anything.  It seems like the work of minutes to produce such a filter.
> I'll be happy to put it out as Open Source if there's any interest.

Hi -

I am having a hard time imagining the use case for this.

Why should you allow a link to determine things like the User-Agent
header? HTTP headers are set by the client for a reason.

Furthermore, as somebody involved in web archiving, I would like to
ask you not to do this.

It is already hard enough for us to tell that:

  http://example.org/HELLOWORLD

is usually the same as:

  http://www.example.org/HELLOWORLD

or:

  http://www.example.org/helloworld

I don’t want to work in a world where this might be the same as:

  http://192.0.32.10/helloworld?HTTP-Host=example.org

Apologies if this sounds hostile, and thanks for reading.

best, Erik Hetzner



Sent from my free software system <http://fsf.org/>.