libwww-perl / libwww-perl/HTTP-Message

please add a function that does Header Field Normalisation

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#116 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Dominant language
Perl
Stars
32
Forks
63
Avg merge
5h 14m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Description

In order to make comparison of two Header Field values more convenient (and correct) it would be great to have a normalisation function in HTTP::Headers, like:

my $normalized_value = $h->normalized_header( 'accept_language');

Normalisation is mentioned in RFC 7234 §4.1 Calculating Secondary Keys with Vary. And could involve:

  • adding/removing whitespace
  • combining fields, for multi value fields
  • reordering fields
  • capitalisation

However, re-ordering and capitalisation can be Header Field dependent and should not break semantics This requires a lot of care, knowing how certain HTTP-Header Fields south to be treated.

NOTE: bare in mind that normalisation is only for display or comparison, I would strongly disagree to change the headers, even though it might semantically totally right.

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Research direction

Start with the HTTP::Headers API and RFC 7234 §4.1, then determine which header fields can be normalized without changing their semantics. The scope should define whitespace, multi-value combination, ordering, and capitalization behavior, while keeping normalization separate from stored headers. Done requires an agreed field-dependent design and coverage for comparisons and display.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
perl
Domain
networking
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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