Re: Bug 18388: Set-Cookie header not honored on 304 (Not modified)status

[Ryan Eberhard]

All,

I apologize that I didn't see the discussion that had occurred on this topic already...  I had previously gone through the archives, but neglected to before sending the previous mail.

Despite the quote from Roy Fielding, I stand by my claim that Set-Cookie is a response-header and not an entity-header.

Ryan Eberhard wrote:

All,

I've reopened bug 18388 with the comments below.

I'd love to have a discussion about Set-Cookie's proper definition -- 
I believe it is a response-header (and thus allowed under a 304) rather than 
an entity-header.  Given that, the proper algorithm would be to filter out 
known entity-headers from processing under a 304 rather than explicit listing 
of the other header types enumerated in RFC 2616.  Set-Cookie is just one 
example of a header that is not mentioned at all in RFC 2616 (don't know if 
there are others).

Thanks,
Ryan Eberhard

Additional comments to bug 18388:

Section 10.3.5 of RFC 2616 makes this statement:

   "If the conditional GET used a strong cache validator (see section
   13.3.3), the response SHOULD NOT include other entity-headers.
   Otherwise (i.e., the conditional GET used a weak validator), the
   response MUST NOT include other entity-headers; this prevents
   inconsistencies between cached entity-bodies and updated headers."

Note that only entity-headers are forbidden.

Section 4.2 describes three sets of headers: request (defined in 5.3), response
(defined in section 6.2), and entity (defined in section 7.1).

Each of these three sections lists headers, but "Set-Cookie" is not listed in
any of the three sets.

Section 6.2 makes this statment:

   "The response-header fields allow the server to pass additional
   information about the response which cannot be placed in the Status-
   Line."

and...

   "However, new or
   experimental header fields MAY be given the semantics of response-
   header fields if all parties in the communication recognize them to
   be response-header fields. Unrecognized header fields are treated as
   entity-header fields."

While section 7.1 makes this statement:

   "Entity-header fields define metainformation about the entity-body or,
   if no body is present, about the resource identified by the request."

Set-Cookie meets the test of universal acceptance as a known response-header and
is much better defined as a response-header ("additional information") than as
an entity-header ("metainformation about the entity-body").

It is also important to note that other major web servers (IIS, iPlanet, and
Domino) will return Set-Cookie headers on a 304 status.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL, BUT PLEASE POST YOUR BUG 
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>http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18388
>
>Set-Cookie header not honored on 304 (Not modified) status
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] changed:
>
>           What    |Removed                     |Added
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
>         Resolution|                            |INVALID
>
>
>
>------- Additional Comments From [EMAIL PROTECTED]  2003-05-31 21:10 -------
>This has been reported before (in the old PR database, against Apache 1.3).
>The answer, in the words of Marc Slemko, is:
>
>"It is not valid to set a cookie in a 304 response.  Please see section 10.3.5
>of RFC2616.  That is the reason Apache explictly lists headers that will be sent
>and why Set-Cookie isn't one of them."
>
>  
>