ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [OAUTH-WG] Last Call: <draft-ietf-oauth-v2-bearer-15.txt> (The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Protocol: Bearer Tokens) to Proposed Standard

2012-01-24 18:19:46
On 2012-01-25 01:03, Mike Jones wrote:
Per the discussion at 
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/oauth/current/msg08040.html, the working 
group's rationale for supporting quoted-string but not token syntax for these 
parameters, and for requiring that backslash ('\') quoting not be used when 
producing them is as follows:

"Once again, the current text reflects a consensus decision of the working group.  
It was viewed that requiring support for multiple ways of doing the same thing 
unnecessarily complicated implementations without any compensating benefit; better to 
support one syntax for each semantic operation and require all implementations to use 
it."

Mike, you continue to ignore that WWW-Authenticate needs to be processed by generic parsers, as a single instance can contain challenges for different schemes.

If you disagree with the text below:

   o  The parsing of challenges and credentials is defined by this
      specification, and cannot be modified by new authentication
      schemes.  When the auth-param syntax is used, all parameters ought
      to support both token and quoted-string syntax, and syntactical
      constraints ought to be defined on the field value after parsing
      (i.e., quoted-string processing).  This is necessary so that
      recipients can use a generic parser that applies to all
      authentication schemes.

(which is from the text defining the registry you are using), then please come over to the HTTPbis WG and ask for a change. It's work-in-progress.

Despite Julian's remarks below, the syntax in the Bearer spec *is* compatible 
with standard parameter parsers, and so no interoperability problems are 
created by restricting the parameter syntax to a subset of the syntax allowed 
by HTTPbis.  No non-standard code is needed to use parameters in the manner 
described in the Bearer spec.

That is not true. Using standard components will cause recipients to accept invalid field instances, which *is* an interoperability problem.

This has happened before: RFC 2617 states that the realm parameter needs to be quoted, but we see that all browsers accept the token form as well (<http://greenbytes.de/tech/tc/httpauth/#simplebasictok>). That's not a surprise because it's the natural thing to do with a generic parser.

Please don't add to the mess. In particular when there really is no reason to do so. All I heard from you is: "we prefer it that way". I'm sorry, but that's not sufficient.

...

Best regards, Julian
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>