Re: [http-state] Is this an omission in the parser rules of draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-21?

"Remy Lebeau" <remy@lebeausoftware.org> Sat, 05 February 2011 00:20 UTC

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From: Remy Lebeau <remy@lebeausoftware.org>
To: ietf@adambarth.com, http-state@ietf.org
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:24:00 -0700
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Subject: Re: [http-state] Is this an omission in the parser rules of draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-21?
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [http-state] Is this an omission in the parser rules of
draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-21?
From: Adam Barth <ietf@adambarth.com>
Date: Fri, February 04, 2011 11:29 am
To: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>
Cc: Remy Lebeau <remy@lebeausoftware.org>, http-state@ietf.org

> The grammar is not used for parsing.  Parsing
> is defined in Section 5, not Section 4.

Section 5 describes how to parse Set-Cookie headers. RFC 2109 grammer
(and real-world use, which you seem to deny exists) for Set-Cookie
headers specifically defines both cookie values and attribute values as
being a "value" type, which is defined as follows:

   value           =       word
   word            =       token | quoted-string

Why can't Section 5 be updated to allow parsing of quoted-string values?
They ARE in use in the real world! They ARE NOT opaque in attribute
values. They are grammar elements that some servers really do use, and
should be parsed as such. I think Section 5 needs to adopt RFC 2109's
definition of the "value" and/or "word" type, instead of using "token"
exclusively.