Re: [http-state] The Domain attribute (was Re: I-D Action:draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-20.txt)

["Paul E. Jones" <[e-mail]>]

Adam,

> > The empty string is also used in this example:
> > Set-Cookie: lang=; Expires=Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
> 
> Why is that?  The "lang" attribute has not been defined, so the valid
> values for the lang attribute certainly haven't been defined.
> 
> > For this reason, this might be another area where we need to consider
> > a syntax change:
> > cookie-pair       = cookie-name "=" cookie-value cookie-name       =
> > token cookie-value      = token | ""
> >                         ^^^^^
> 
> I would not recommend that servers send empty attribute values.
> That's just asking for interoperability problems.

But, "lang" is sent in the above example as an empty string.  Thus, this
should be the definition of "cookie-value":
cookie-value      = token | ""

As the text is current written, I think this is illegal:
Set-Cookie: lang=; Expires=Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT

> > In any case, I don't have a strong preference and if the group wants
> > to change the syntax.  That's OK.  It just seems allowing an empty
> > string for "Domain" is more consistent with the text than not.
> 
> More consistent with what text?  The text in the User Agent Requirements
> section is for user agents and not for servers.  You're talking about
> what's useful for syntax for servers to generate.  It's not useful for
> servers to generate empty Domain attributes.  Instead of generating an
> empty Domain attribute, they ought to simply omit the Domain attribute.

OK, that's a good argument. :-)

Paul