[Python-Dev] [Python-ideas] Proposed addtion to urllib.parse in 3.1 (and urlparse in 2.7)

[Bill Janssen]

Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

> Bill Janssen <janssen <at> parc.com> writes:
> > 
> > Sure.  But nowhere does a spec say that this page charset should be used
> > in sending the values of a FORM using application/x-www-form-urlencoded
> > in a new HTTP request.  It's just a convention some browsers use.
> 
> Let's call it a de facto standard then. A behaviour doesn't have to be engraved
> in an RFC to be considered standard.

Sure.  And if HTTP was all about browsers keying off pages, that would
be fine with me.  But it's not.  HTTP is used in lots of places where
there are no browsers; in fact, the idea we're busy bike-shedding is all
about a client-side library making calls on a server.  It's used in
places where there are no "pages", too, just servers on which clients
are making REST-style calls.  So in the real world, the only way in
which you can reliably post non-ASCII values to a server using HTTP is
with multipart/form-data, which allows you to explicitly say what
character set you are using.  I've debugged this problem too many times
with REST servers of various kinds to think otherwise.

Bill