[Webpush] Some comments on webpush server responses

[Ben Last <[e-mail]>]

Hi all

Apologies if I violate IETF etiquette here; I have some comments on
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-webpush-protocol-08#section-7.3

In our push service, we're often coming across the problem of
distinguishing *why* we get a 404 (or 410 for Mozilla's autopush) reponse
when sending to an existing push subscription. We know of the following
reasons why a push server might respond with a 404/410 (there may of course
be others):

   1. The push subscription endpoint to which a POST was made is invalid -
   it does not refer to a known subscription
   2. The push subscription endpoint to which a POST was made is *no
longer* valid
   - it refers to a subscription that has been removed because the end-user
   removed notification permission
   3. The push subscription endpoint to which a POST was made is *no
longer* valid,
   but the subscription should be recreated (i.e., it has expired)

Section 7.3 appears to refer to the last of these, but an application
server has no information that allows it to distinguish between the cases.

It's important for us to be able to distinguish because in case 1 we should
remove the subscription, in case 2 we should mark it as blocked (so that
website code does not invite the user to resubscribe) and in case 3 we
should mark the subscription so that a service worker or website code
resubscribes.

Regards
Ben

—

Ben Last, Senior Full Stack Engineer

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