[httpapi] Byte range PATCH

[Austin William Wright <[e-mail]>]

Hello HTTP APIs,

I’m seeking to standardize a media type for writing to particular byte offsets in a target document. This seems to be a common problem in HTTP applications, including in my own work with streaming parsers.

This sort of operation is common in filesystems. For example, you append audio data to a .wav file, and then you update the header at the start of the file. I don’t know of any way to do this operation over HTTP, except a PUT that replaces the entire resource.

This has been discussed in the HTTP WG list, as part of “resumable uploads” <https://httpwg.org/http-extensions/draft-ietf-httpbis-resumable-upload.html>, and I emailed there some months ago about this I-D. But aside from the resumable uploads being in HTTP WG, this seems more like an API-related feature.

Here’s the I-D I’ve written: draft-wright-http-patch-byterange-01 <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-wright-http-patch-byterange-01.html>

Editor’s copy: https://awwright.github.io/http-progress/draft-wright-http-patch-byterange.html

This is the successor to version 00; in response to some feedback, I added a binary format. And I discuss what is necessary to support “splicing” (an insertion that shifts other content around) and indeterminate-length uploads, which is a requested feature for the “resumable uploads” spec.

Is HTTP APIs the best place to pursue this? I’m hoping I can discuss this at IETF 116.

Thanks,

Austin Wright.