title: On the use of HTTP as a Substrate docname: draft-ietf-httpbis-bcp56bis-latest date: {DATE} category: bcp obsoletes: 3205
ipr: trust200902 area: Applications and Real-Time workgroup: HTTP keyword: Internet-Draft keyword: HTTP keyword: Web keyword: substrate
stand_alone: yes pi: [toc, tocindent, sortrefs, symrefs, strict, compact, comments, inline]
ins: M. Nottingham
name: Mark Nottingham
organization:
email: mnot@mnot.net
uri: https://www.mnot.net/
informative: HTML5: target: https://html.spec.whatwg.org title: HTML - Living Standard author: - org: WHATWG FETCH: target: https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org title: Fetch - Living Standard author: - org: WHATWG
--- abstract
HTTP is often used as a substrate for other application protocols. This document specifies best practices for these protocols' use of HTTP.
This document obsoletes RFC 3205.
--- note_Note_to_Readers_
Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTP working group mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org), which is archived at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/.
Working Group information can be found at http://httpwg.github.io/; source code and issues list for this draft can be found at bcp56bis .
--- middle
HTTP {{!RFC7230}} is often used as a substrate for other application protocols. This is done for a variety of reasons, including:
- familiarity by implementers, specifiers, administrators, developers and users,
- availability of a variety of client, server and proxy implementations,
- ease of use,
- ubiquity of Web browsers,
- reuse of existing mechanisms like authentication and encryption,
- presence of HTTP servers and clients in target deployments, and
- its ability to traverse firewalls.
In many cases, these protocols are ad hoc; they are intended for only deployment on the server side, and consumption by a limited set of clients. A body of practices and tools has arisen around defining such "HTTP APIs" that favours these conditions.
However, when such a protocol is standarised, it is typically deployed on multiple servers, implemented a number of times, and might be consumed by a broader variety of clients. Such diversity brings a different set of concerns, and tools and practices intended for a single-server deployment might not be suitable.
In particular, standards-defined HTTP APIs need to more carefully consider how extensibility and evolution will be handled, how different deployment requirements will be accommodated, and how clients will evolve with the API.
At the same time, the Internet community has a tradition of protocol reuse (e.g., Telnet {{?RFC0854}} as a substrate for FTP {{?RFC0959}} and SMTP {{?RFC2821}}), but less experience using HTTP as a substrate. Because HTTP is extensible in many ways, a number of questions arise, such as:
- Should an application using HTTP define a new URL scheme? Use new ports?
- Should it use standard HTTP methods and status codes, or define new ones?
- How can the maximum value be extracted from the use of HTTP?
- How does it coexist with other uses of HTTP -- especially Web browsing?
- How can interoperability problems and "protocol dead ends" be avoided?
This document contains best current practices regarding the use of HTTP by applications other than Web browsing. {{used}} defines what applications it applies to; {{overview}} surveys the properties of HTTP that are important to preserve, and {{bp}} conveys best practices for those applications that do use HTTP.
It is written primarily to guide IETF efforts to define application protocols using HTTP for deployment on the Internet, but might be applicable in other situations. Note that the requirements herein do not necessarily apply to the development of generic HTTP extensions.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 {{!RFC2119}} {{!RFC8174}} when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
Different applications have different goals when using HTTP. In this document, we say an application is using HTTP when any of the following conditions are true:
- The transport port in use is 80 or 443,
- The URL scheme "http" or "https" is used,
- The ALPN protocol ID {{!RFC7301}} generically identifies HTTP (e.g., "http/1.1", "h2", "h2c"), or
- The IANA registries defined for HTTP are updated or modified.
When an application is using HTTP, all of the requirements of the HTTP protocol suite (including but not limited to {{!RFC7230}}, {{!RFC7231}}, {{!RFC7232}}, {{!RFC7233}}, {{!RFC7234}}, {{!RFC7235}} and {{!RFC7540}}) are in force.
An application might not be using HTTP according to this definition, but still relying upon the HTTP specifications in some manner. For example, an application might wish to avoid re-specifying parts of the message format, but change others; or, it might want to use a different set of methods.
Such applications are referred to as protocols based upon HTTP in this document. These have more freedom to modify protocol operation, but are also likely to lose at least a portion of the benefits outlined above, as most HTTP implementations won't be easily adaptable to these changes, and as the protocol diverges from HTTP, the benefit of mindshare will be lost.
Protocols that are based upon HTTP MUST NOT reuse HTTP's URL schemes, transport ports, ALPN protocol IDs or IANA registries; rather, they are encouraged to establish their own.
There are many ways that applications using HTTP are defined and deployed, and sometimes they are brought to the IETF for standardisation. In that process, what might be workable for deployment in a limited fashion isn't appropriate for standardisation and the corresponding broader deployment.
This section examines the facets of the protocol that are important to preserve in these situations.
When writing an application's specification, it's often tempting to specify exactly how HTTP is to be implemented, supported and used.
However, this can easily lead to an unintended profile of HTTP's behaviour. For example, it's common to see specifications with language like this:
A `200 OK` response means that the widget has successfully
been updated.
This sort of specification is bad practice, because it is adding new semantics to HTTP's status codes and methods, respectively; a recipient -- whether it's an origin server, client library, intermediary or cache -- now has to know these extra semantics to understand the message.
Some applications even require specific behaviours, such as:
A `POST` request MUST result in a `201 Created` response.
This forms an expectation in the client that the response will always be 201 Created, when in
fact there are a number of reasons why the status code might differ in a real deployment. If the
client does not anticipate this, the application's deployment is brittle.
Much of the value of HTTP is in its generic semantics -- that is, the protocol elements defined by HTTP are potentially applicable to every resource, not specific to a particular context. Application-specific semantics are expressed in the payload; mostly, in the body, but also in header fields.
This allows a HTTP message to be examined by generic HTTP software (e.g., HTTP servers, intermediaries, client implementations), and its handling to be correctly determined. It also allows people to leverage their knowledge of HTTP semantics without special-casing them for a particular application.
Therefore, applications that use HTTP MUST NOT re-define, refine or overlay the semantics of defined protocol elements. Instead, they should focus their specifications on protocol elements that are specific to that application; namely their HTTP resources.
See {{resource}} for details.
Another common practice is assuming that the HTTP server's name space (or a portion thereof) is exclusively for the use of a single application. This effectively overlays special, application-specific semantics onto that space, precludes other applications from using it.
As explained in {{!RFC7320}}, such "squatting" on a part of the URL space by a standard usurps the server's authority over its own resources, can cause deployment issues, and is therefore bad practice in standards.
Instead of statically defining URL components like paths, it is RECOMMENDED that applications using HTTP define links in payloads, to allow flexibility in deployment.
Using runtime links in this fashion has a number of other benefits. For example, navigating with a link allows a request to be routed to a different server without the overhead of a redirection, thereby supporting deployment across machines well. It becomes possible to "mix" different applications on the same server, and offers a natural path for extensibility, versioning and capability management.
The simplest possible use of HTTP is to POST data to a single URL, thereby effectively tunnelling through the protocol.
This "RPC" style of communication does get some benefit from using HTTP -- namely, message framing and the availability of implementations -- but fails to realise many others when used exclusively:
- Caching for server scalability, latency and bandwidth reduction, and reliability;
- Granularity of access control (through use of a rich space of URLs);
- Partial content to selectively request part of a response;
- Definition of an information space using URLs; and
- The ability to interact with the application easily using a Web browser.
Using such a high-level protocol to tunnel simple semantics has downsides too; because of its more advanced capabilities, breadth of deployment and age, HTTP's complexity can cause interoperability problems that could be avoided by using a simpler substrate (e.g., WebSockets {{?RFC6455}}, if browser support is necessary, or TCP {{?RFC0793}} if not), or making the application be based upon HTTP, instead of using it (as defined in {{used}}).
Applications that use HTTP are encouraged to accommodate the various features that the protocol offers, so that their users receive the maximum benefit from it. This document does not require specific features to be used, since the appropriate design tradeoffs are highly specific to a given situation. However, following the practices in {{bp}} will help make them available.
This section contains best practices regarding the use of HTTP by applications, including practices for specific HTTP protocol elements.
When specifying the use of HTTP, an application SHOULD use {{!RFC7230}} as the primary reference; it is not necessary to reference all of the specifications in the HTTP suite unless there are specific reasons to do so (e.g., a particular feature is called out).
Applications using HTTP MAY specify a minimum version to be supported (HTTP/1.1 is suggested), and MUST NOT specify a maximum version, to preserve the protocol's ability to evolve.
Likewise, applications need not specify what HTTP mechanisms -- such as redirection, caching, authentication, proxy authentication, and so on -- are to be supported. For example, an application can specify that it uses HTTP like this:
Foo Application uses HTTP [RFC7230]. Implementations MUST support
HTTP/1.1, and MAY support later versions.
When specifying examples of protocol interactions, applications SHOULD document both the request and response messages, with full headers, preferably in HTTP/1.1 format. For example:
GET /thing HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/things+json
User-Agent: Foo/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/things+json
Content-Length: 500
Server: Bar/2.2
[payload here]
Applications that use HTTP should focus on defining the following application-specific protocol elements:
- Media types {{!RFC6838}}, often based upon a format convention such as JSON {{?RFC8259}},
- HTTP header fields, as per {{headers}}, and
- The behaviour of resources, as identified by link relations {{!RFC8288}}.
By composing these protocol elements, an application can define a set of resources, identified by link relations, that implement specified behaviours, including:
- Retrieval of their state using GET, in one or more formats identified by media type;
- Resource creation or update using POST or PUT, with an appropriately identified request body format;
- Data processing using POST and identified request and response body format(s); and
- Resource deletion using DELETE.
For example, an application might specify:
Resources linked to with the "example-widget" link relation type are
Widgets. The state of a Widget can be fetched in the
"application/example-widget+json" format, and can be updated by PUT
to the same link. Widget resources can be deleted.
The "Example-Count" response header field on Widget representations
indicates how many Widgets are held by the sender.
The "application/example-widget+json" format is a JSON [RFC8259]
format representing the state of a Widget. It contains links to
related information in the link indicated by the Link header field
value with the "example-other-info" link relation type.
HTTP does not mandate some behaviours that have nevertheless become very common; if these are not explicitly specified by applications using HTTP, there may be confusion and interoperability problems. This section recommends default handling for these mechanisms.
- Redirect handling - applications using HTTP SHOULD specify that 3xx redirect status codes be followed automatically. See {{!RFC7231}}, Section 6.4.
- Redirect methods - applications using HTTP SHOULD specify that 301 and 302 redirect status codes rewrite the POST method to GET. See {{!RFC7231}}, Section 6.4.
- Cookies - Applications using HTTP MUST explicitly reference the Cookie specification {{?RFC6265}} if they are required.
- Certificates - Applications using HTTP MUST specify that TLS certificates are to be checked according to {{!RFC2818}} when HTTPS is used.
In general, applications using HTTP ought to align their usage as closely as possible with Web browsers, to avoid interoperability issues when they are used. See {{browser}}.
If an application using HTTP has browser compatibility as a goal, client interaction ought to be defined in terms of {{FETCH}}, since that is the abstraction that browsers use for HTTP; it enforces many of these best practices.
Applications using HTTP MUST NOT require HTTP features that are usually negotiated to be supported. For example, requiring that clients support responses with a certain content-encoding ({{?RFC7231}}, Section 3.1.2.2) instead of negotiating for it ({{?RFC7231}}, Section 5.3.4) means that otherwise conformant clients cannot interoperate with the application. Applications MAY encourage the implementation of such features, though.
In HTTP, URLs are opaque identifiers under the control of the server. As outlined in {{!RFC7320}}, standards cannot usurp this space, since it might conflict with existing resources, and constrain implementation and deployment.
In other words, applications that use HTTP shouldn't associate application semantics with specific URL paths on arbitrary servers. Doing so inappropriately conflates the identity of the resource (its URL) with the capabilities that resource supports, bringing about many of the same interoperability problems that {{?RFC4367}} warns of.
For example, specifying that a "GET to the URL /foo retrieves a bar document" is bad practice. Likewise, specifying "The widget API is at the path /bar" violates {{!RFC7320}}.
Instead, applications that use HTTP are encouraged to ensure that URLs are discovered at runtime, allowing HTTP-based services to describe their own capabilities. One way to do this is to use typed links {{?RFC8288}} to convey the URIs that are in use, as well as the semantics of the resources that they identify. See {{resource}} for details.
Generally, a client will begin interacting with a given application server by requesting an initial document that contains information about that particular deployment, potentially including links to other relevant resources.
Applications that use HTTP are encouraged to allow an arbitrary URL to be used as that entry point. For example, rather than specifying "the initial document is at "/foo/v1", they should allow a deployment to use any URL as the entry point for the application.
In cases where doing so is impractical (e.g., it is not possible to convey a whole URL, but only a hostname) standard applications that use HTTP can request a well-known URL {{?RFC5785}} as an entry point.
Applications that use HTTP will typically employ the "http" and/or "https" URL schemes. "https" is preferred to provide authentication, integrity and confidentiality, as well as mitigate pervasive monitoring attacks {{?RFC7258}}.
However, application-specific schemes can be defined as well.
When defining an URL scheme for an application using HTTP, there are a number of tradeoffs and caveats to keep in mind:
-
Unmodified Web browsers will not support the new scheme. While it is possible to register new URL schemes with Web browsers (e.g. registerProtocolHandler() in {{HTML5}}, as well as several proprietary approaches), support for these mechanisms is not shared by all browsers, and their capabilities vary.
-
Existing non-browser clients, intermediaries, servers and associated software will not recognise the new scheme. For example, a client library might fail to dispatch the request; a cache might refuse to store the response, and a proxy might fail to forward the request.
-
Because URLs occur in and are generated in HTTP artefacts commonly, often without human intervention (e.g., in the
Locationresponse header), it can be difficult to assure that the new scheme is used consistently. -
The resources identified by the new scheme will still be available using "http" and/or "https" URLs. Those URLs can "leak" into use, which can present security and operability issues. For example, using a new scheme to assure that requests don't get sent to a "normal" Web site is likely to fail.
-
Features that rely upon the URL's origin {{?RFC6454}}, such as the Web's same-origin policy, will be impacted by a change of scheme.
-
HTTP-specific features such as cookies {{?RFC6265}}, authentication {{?RFC7235}}, caching {{?RFC7234}}, and CORS {{FETCH}} might or might not work correctly, depending on how they are defined and implemented. Generally, they are designed and implemented with an assumption that the URL will always be "http" or "https".
-
Web features that require a secure context {{?SECCTXT=W3C.CR-secure-contexts-20160915}} will likely treat a new scheme as insecure.
See {{?RFC7595}} for more information about minting new URL schemes.
Applications that use HTTP can use the applicable default port (80 for HTTP, 443 for HTTPS), or they can be deployed upon other ports. This decision can be made at deployment time, or might be encouraged by the application's specification (e.g., by registering a port for that application).
In either case, non-default ports will need to be reflected in the authority of all URLs for that resource; the only mechanism for changing a default port is changing the scheme (see {{scheme}}).
Using a port other than the default has privacy implications (i.e., the protocol can now be distinguished from other traffic), as well as operability concerns (as some networks might block or otherwise interfere with it). Privacy implications should be documented in Security Considerations.
See {{?RFC7605}} for further guidance.
Applications that use HTTP MUST confine themselves to using registered HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH.
New HTTP methods are rare; they are required to be registered with IETF Review (see {{!RFC7232}}), and are also required to be generic. That means that they need to be potentially applicable to all resources, not just those of one application.
While historically some applications (e.g., {{?RFC4791}}) have defined non-generic methods, {{!RFC7231}} now forbids this.
When authors believe that a new method is required, they are encouraged to engage with the HTTP community early, and document their proposal as a separate HTTP extension, rather than as part of an application's specification.
GET is one of the most common and useful HTTP methods; its retrieval semantics allow caching, side-effect free linking and forms the basis of many of the benefits of using HTTP.
A common use of GET is to perform queries, often using the query component of the URL; this is this a familiar pattern from Web browsing, and the results can be cached, improving efficiency of an often expensive process.
In some cases, however, GET might be unwieldy for expressing queries, because of the limited syntax of the URL; in particular, if binary data forms part of the query terms, it needs to be encoded to conform to URL syntax.
While this is not an issue for short queries, it can become one for larger query terms, or ones which need to sustain a high rate of requests. Additionally, some HTTP implementations limit the size of URLs they support -- although modern HTTP software has much more generous limits than previously (typically, considerably more than 8000 octets, as required by {{!RFC7230}} Section 3.1.1).
In these cases, an application using HTTP might consider using POST to express queries in the request body; doing so avoids encoding overhead and URL length limits in implementations. However, in doing so it should be noted that the benefits of GET such as caching and linking to query results are lost. Therefore, applications using HTTP that feel a need to allow POST queries ought consider allowing both methods.
Applications that use HTTP SHOULD NOT define GET requests to have side effects, since implementations can and do retry HTTP GET requests that fail.
Finally, note that while HTTP allows GET requests to have a body syntactically, this is done only to allow parsers to be generic; as per {{!RFC7231}}, Section 4.3.1, a body on a GET has no meaning, and will be either ignored or rejected by generic HTTP software. As a result, applications that use HTTP SHOULD NOT define GET to have any side effects upon their resources.
Applications that use HTTP MUST only use registered HTTP status codes.
As with methods, new HTTP status codes are rare, and required (by {{!RFC7231}}) to be registered with IETF review. Similarly, HTTP status codes are generic; they are required (by {{!RFC7231}}) to be potentially applicable to all resources, not just to those of one application.
When authors believe that a new status code is required, they are encouraged to engage with the HTTP community early, and document their proposal as a separate HTTP extension, rather than as part of an application's specification.
The primary function of status codes is to convey HTTP semantics for the benefit of generic HTTP software, not application-specific semantics. Therefore, applications MUST NOT specify additional semantics or refine existing semantics for status codes.
In particular, specifying that a particular status code has a specific meaning in the context of an application is harmful, as these are not generic semantics, since the consumer needs to be in the context of the application to understand them.
Furthermore, applications using HTTP MUST NOT re-specify the semantics of HTTP status codes, even if it is only by copying their definition. They MUST NOT require specific reason phrases to be used; the reason phrase has no function in HTTP, and is not guaranteed to be preserved by implementations. The reason phrase is not carried in the {{RFC7540}} message format.
Typically, applications using HTTP will convey application-specific information in the message body and/or HTTP header fields, not the status code. {{?RFC7807}} provides one way for applications using HTTP to do this.
Specifications sometimes also create a "laundry list" of potential status codes, in an effort to be
helpful. The problem with doing so is that such a list is never complete; for example, if a network
proxy is interposed, the client might encounter a 407 Proxy Authentication Required response; or,
if the server is rate limiting the client, it might receive a 429 Too Many Requests response.
Since the list of HTTP status codes can be added to, it's safer to specify behaviours in terms of
general response classes (e.g., "successful response" for 2xx; "client error" for 4xx and "server
error" for 5xx), pointing out that clients SHOULD be able to handle all applicable protocol
elements gracefully (i.e., falling back to the generic n00 semantics of a given status code;
e.g., 499 can be safely handled as 400 by clients that don't recognise it).
Applications that use HTTP MAY define new HTTP header fields, following the advice in {{!RFC7231}}, Section 8.3.1.
Typically, using HTTP header fields is appropriate in a few different situations:
- Their content is useful to intermediaries (who often wish to avoid parsing the body), and/or
- Their content is useful to generic HTTP software (e.g., clients, servers), and/or
- It is not possible to include their content in the message body (usually because a format does not allow it).
New header fields MUST be registered, as per {{!RFC7231}} and {{!RFC3864}}.
It is RECOMMENDED that header field names be short (even when HTTP/2 header compression is in effect, there is an overhead) but appropriately specific. In particular, if a header field is specific to an application, an identifier for that application SHOULD form a prefix to the header field name, separated by a "-".
For example, if the "example" application needs to create three headers, they might be called "example-foo", "example-bar" and "example-baz". Note that the primary motivation here is to avoid consuming more generic header names, not to reserve a portion of the namespace for the application; see {{!RFC6648}} for related considerations.
The semantics of existing HTTP header fields MUST NOT be re-defined without updating their
registration or defining an extension to them (if allowed). For example, an application using HTTP
cannot specify that the Location header has a special meaning in a certain context.
See {{caching}} for the interaction between headers and HTTP caching; in particular, request headers that are used to "select" a response have impact there, and need to be carefully considered.
See {{state}} for considerations regarding header fields that carry application state (e.g,. Cookie).
There are many potential formats for payloads; for example, JSON {{?RFC8259}}, XML {{?XML=W3C.REC-xml-20081126}}, and CBOR {{?RFC7049}}. Best practices for their use are out of scope for this document.
Applications SHOULD register distinct media types for each format they define; this makes it possible to identify them unambiguously and negotiate for their use. See {{!RFC6838}} for more information.
HTTP caching {{?RFC7234}} is one of the primary benefits of using HTTP for applications; it provides scalability, reduces latency and improves reliability. Furthermore, HTTP caches are readily available in browsers and other clients, networks as forward and reverse proxies, Content Delivery Networks and as part of server software.
Assigning even a short freshness lifetime ({{?RFC7234}}, Section 4.2) -- e.g., 5 seconds -- allows a response to be reused to satisfy multiple clients, and/or a single client making the same request repeatedly. In general, if it is safe to reuse something, consider assigning a freshness lifetime; cache implementations take active measures to expire content intelligently when they are out of space, so "it will fill up the cache" is not a valid concern.
Understand that stale responses (e.g., one with "Cache-Control: max-age=0") can be reused when the cache is disconnected from the origin server; this can be useful for handling network issues. See {{?RFC7234}}, Section 4.2.4, and also {{?RFC5861}} for additional controls over stale content.
Stale responses can be refreshed by assigning a validator, saving both transfer bandwidth and latency for large responses; see {{RFC7232}}.
In some situations, responses without explicit cache directives (e.g., Cache-Control or Expires) will be stored and served using a heuristic freshness lifetime; see {{?RFC7234}}, Section 4.2.2. As the heuristic is not under control of the application, it is generally preferable to set an explicit freshness lifetime.
If caching of a response is not desired, the appropriate response directive is "Cache-Control: no-store". This only need be sent in situations where the response might be cached; see {{?RFC7234}}, Section 3.
If an application defines a request header field that might be used by a server to change the response's headers or body, authors should point out that this has implications for caching; in general, such resources need to either make their responses uncacheable (e.g., with the "no-store" cache-control directive defined in {{!RFC7234}}, Section 5.2.2.3) or consistently send the Vary response header ({{!RFC7231}}, Section 7.1.4).
When an application has a need to express a lifetime that's separate from the freshness lifetime, this should be expressed separately, either in the response's body or in a separate header field. When this happens, the relationship between HTTP caching and that lifetime need to be carefully considered, since the response will be used as long as it is considered fresh.
Like other functions, HTTP caching is generic; it does not have knowledge of the application in use. Therefore, caching extensions need to be backwards-compatible, as per {{?RFC7234}}, Section 5.2.3.
Applications that use HTTP MAY use stateful cookies {{?RFC6265}} to identify a client and/or store client-specific data to contextualise requests.
When used, it is important to carefully specify the scoping and use of cookies; if the application exposes sensitive data or capabilities (e.g., by acting as an ambient authority), exploits are possible. Mitigations include using a request-specific token to assure the intent of the client.
Applications MUST NOT make assumptions about the relationship between separate requests on a single transport connection; doing so breaks many of the assumptions of HTTP as a stateless protocol, and will cause problems in interoperability, security, operability and evolution.
Applications that use HTTP MAY use HTTP authentication {{?RFC7235}} to identify clients. The Basic authentication scheme {{?RFC7617}} MUST NOT be used unless the underlying transport is authenticated, integrity-protected and confidential (e.g., as provided the "HTTPS" URL scheme, or another using TLS). The Digest scheme {{?RFC7616}} MUST NOT be used unless the underlying transport is similarly secure, or the chosen hash algorithm is not "MD5".
When used, it is important to carefully specify the scoping and use of authentication; if the application exposes sensitive data or capabilities (e.g., by acting as an ambient authority), exploits are possible. Mitigations include using a request-specific token to assure the intent of the client.
Even if there is not an intent for an application that uses HTTP to be used with a Web browser, its resources will remain available to browsers and other HTTP clients.
This means that all such applications need to consider how browsers will interact with them, particularly regarding security.
For example, if an application's state can be changed using a POST request, a Web browser can easily be coaxed into making that request by a HTML form on an arbitrary Web site.
Or, if a resource reflects data from the request into a response, that can be used to perform a Cross-Site Scripting attack on Web browsers directed to it.
This is only a small sample of the kinds of issues that applications using HTTP must consider. Generally, the best approach is to consider the application as a Web application, and to follow best practices for their secure development.
A complete enumeration of such practices is out of scope for this document, but some considerations include:
- Using Strict Transport Security {{?RFC6797}} to assure that HTTPS is used
- Using Content-Security-Policy {{?W3C.WD-CSP3-20160913}} to constrain the capabilities of content, thereby mitigating Cross-Site Scripting attacks (which are possible if client-provided data is exposed in any part of a response in the application)
- Using X-Frame-Options {{?RFC7034}} to prevent content from being included in a HTML frame from another origin, thereby enabling "clickjacking"
- Using Referrer-Policy {{?W3C.CR-referrer-policy-20170126}} to prevent sensitive data in URLs from being leaked in the Referer request header
- Using the 'HttpOnly' flag on Cookies to assure that cookies are not exposed to browser scripting languages {{?RFC6265}}
Depending on how they are intended to be deployed, specifications for applications using HTTP might require the use of these mechanisms in specific ways, or might merely point them out in Security Considerations.
If an application using HTTP has browser compatibility as a goal, client interaction ought to be defined in terms of {{FETCH}}, since that is the abstraction that browsers use for HTTP; it enforces many of these best practices.
Because the origin {{!RFC6454}} is how many HTTP capabilities are scoped, applications also need to consider how deployments might interact with other applications (including Web browsing) on the same origin.
For example, if Cookies {{?RFC6265}} are used to carry application state, they will be sent with all requests to the origin by default, unless scoped by path, and the application might receive cookies from other applications on the origin. This can lead to security issues, as well as collision in cookie names.
One solution to these issues is to require a dedicated hostname for the application, so that it has a unique origin. However, it is often desirable to allow multiple applications to be deployed on a single hostname; doing so provides the most deployment flexibility and enables them to be "mixed" together (See {{RFC7320}} for details). Therefore, applications using HTTP should strive to allow multiple applications on an origin.
To enable this, when specifying the use of Cookies, HTTP authentication realms {{?RFC7235}}, or other origin-wide HTTP mechanisms, applications using HTTP SHOULD NOT mandate the use of a particular identifier, but instead let deployments configure them. Consideration SHOULD be given to scoping them to part of the origin, using their specified mechanisms for doing so.
Modern Web browsers constrain the ability of content from one origin to access resources from another, to avoid leaking private information. As a result, applications that wish to expose cross-origin data to browsers will need to implement the CORS protocol; see {{FETCH}}.
This document has no requirements for IANA.
{{state}} discusses the impact of using stateful mechanisms in the protocol as ambient authority, and suggests a mitigation.
{{scheme}} requires support for 'https' URLs, and discourages the use of 'http' URLs, to provide authentication, integrity and confidentiality, as well as mitigate pervasive monitoring attacks.
{{browser}} highlights the implications of Web browsers' capabilities on applications that use HTTP.
{{other-apps}} discusses the issues that arise when applications are deployed on the same origin as Web sites (and other applications).
Applications that use HTTP in a manner that involves modification of implementations -- for example, requiring support for a new URL scheme, or a non-standard method -- risk having those implementations "fork" from their parent HTTP implementations, with the possible result that they do not benefit from patches and other security improvements incorporated upstream.
--- back
{{?RFC3205}} captured the Best Current Practice in the early 2000's, based on the concerns facing protocol designers at the time. Use of HTTP has changed considerably since then, and as a result this document is substantially different. As a result, the changes are too numerous to list individually.