Add req.discard_request_body().

• Key: MODPYTHON-153
• Type: New Feature
• Status: Closed
• Resolution: Fixed
• Priority: Major
• Assignee: Graham Dumpleton
• Reporter: Graham Dumpleton
• Component/s: core
• Fix Version/s: 3.3.1

Description

In HTTP/1.1 any method may include a request body, whereas in HTTP/1.0 only POST and PUT were allowed to. To avoid any potential problems if a handler were trying to emulate in part the default Apache handler for requests, in would be appropriate for a handler to ensure that any request body is discarded. Apache provides a function specifically for this purpose which is called ap_discard_request_body(). For completeness this function should be available in the request object API as req.discard_request_body().

Comments

[Graham Dumpleton]

Here is the prototype and documentation:

/**
 * In HTTP/1.1, any method can have a body. However, most GET handlers
 * wouldn't know what to do with a request body if they received one.
 * This helper routine tests for and reads any message body in the request,
 * simply discarding whatever it receives. We need to do this because
 * failing to read the request body would cause it to be interpreted
 * as the next request on a persistent connection.
 * @param r The current request
 * @return error status if request is malformed, OK otherwise
 */
AP_DECLARE(int) ap_discard_request_body(request_rec *r);

Note that by rights, mod_python.publisher and mod_python.psp should both call this method for GET requests. As pointed out in documentation above, if it didn't and GET request contained content then not discarding it can stuff up a following request if a persistent connection is used and multiple requests are pipelined.

[Graham Dumpleton]

New function added, but decision as to whether this function should be called by mod_python.publisher and mod_python.psp for a GET request defered to another time and to be dealt with as separate issue if need be.