RFC 2169 (rfc2169) - Page 3 of 9
A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN Resolution
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2169 HTTP in URN Resolution June 1997 Handling these requests on the server side is easy to implement using CGI or other, server-specific, extension mechanisms. CGI scripts will see the incoming URI in the QUERY_STRING environment variable. Any %encoded characters in the URN will remain in their %encoded state in that string. The script can take the URN, look it up in a database, and return the requested information. One caveat should be kept in mind. The URN syntax document [4] discusses the notion of lexical equivalance and requires that resolvers return identical results for URNs that are lexically equivalent. Implementors of this specification must be careful to obey that rule. For example, the two requests below MUST return identical results, since the URNs are lexically equivalent. GET /uri-res/N2L?urn:cid:foo@huh.com HTTP/1.0 GET /uri-res/N2L?URN:CID:foo@huh.com HTTP/1.0 3.0 Service-specific details: ============================= This section goes through the various resolution services established in the URN services document [5] and states how to encode each of them, how the results should be returned, and any special status codes that are likely to arise. Unless stated otherwise, the THTTP requests are formed according to the simple convention above, either for HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1. The response is assumed to be an entity with normal headers and body unless stated otherwise. (N2L is the only request that need not return a body). 3.1 N2L (URN to URL): ---------------------- The request is encoded as above. The URL MUST be returned in a Location: header for the convienience of the user in the most common case of wanting the resource. If the lookup is successful, a 30X status line SHOULD be returned. HTTP/1.1 clients should be sent the 303 status code. HTTP/1.0 clients should be sent the 302 (Moved temporarily) status code unless the resolver has particular reasons for using 301 (moved permanently) or 304 (not modified) codes. Note that access controls may be applied to this, or any other, resolution service request. Therefore the 401 (unauthorized) and 403 (forbidden) status codes are legal responses. The server may wish to provide a body in the response to explain the reason for refusing access, and/or to provide alternate information about the resource, such as the price it will cost to obtain the resource's URL. Daniel Experimental
