BaseHTTPServer issues

samwyse samwyse at gmail.com
Fri Nov 23 08:14:31 EST 2007


I've just now submitted two issues to the issue tracker:


1491 	BaseHTTPServer incorrectly implements response code 100

RFC 2616 sec 8.2.3 states, "An origin server that sends a 100
(Continue) response MUST ultimately send a final status code, once the
request body is received  and processed, unless it terminates the
transport connection prematurely."  The obvious way to do this is to
invoke the 'send_response' method twice, once with a code of 100, then
with the final code.  However, BaseHTTPServer will always send two
headers ('Server' and 'Date') when it send a response.  One possible
fix is to add an option to the method to suppress sending headers;
another is to add the following code to the 'send_response' method,
immediately prior to the calls to 'self.send_header':

        if code == 100:
            return

The more paranoid among us may wish to use this code instead:

        if code == 100:
            expectation = self.headers.get('Expect', "")
            if expectation.lower() == '100-continue':
                return


1492  	BaseHTTPServer hard-codes Content-Type for error messages

The send_error method always sends a Content-Type of 'text/html'.
Other content types are both possible and desirable.  For example,
someone writing a REST server might wish to send XML error messages.
Following the example of DEFAULT_ERROR_MESSAGE, I propose adding the
following in the appropriate places:

91a92,94
> # Default error content-type
> DEFAULT_ERROR_TYPE = 'text/html'
>
345c348
<         self.send_header("Content-Type", "text/html")
---
>         self.send_header("Content-Type", error_message_type)
351a355
>     error_message_type = DEFAULT_ERROR_TYPE



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