Send binary data via GET
Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2006 6:16 pm
I am currently writing code to validate URIs. While I was working on it, I realized that using percent-encoding would, theoretically speaking, enable people to insert binary data into the URI: i.e. %00.
W3C's document on this matter is ambiguous: it does not mention binary data specifically but does comment on non-ASCII characters, but in the context of actual character encodings.
This leads me to believe that binary data is not meant to be transferred via HTTP GET. This also implies that the URI should be well-formed UTF-8 after decoding everything. How interesting. Of course, it could be that none of this really matters.
What do you think?
W3C's document on this matter is ambiguous: it does not mention binary data specifically but does comment on non-ASCII characters, but in the context of actual character encodings.
This leads me to believe that binary data is not meant to be transferred via HTTP GET. This also implies that the URI should be well-formed UTF-8 after decoding everything. How interesting. Of course, it could be that none of this really matters.
What do you think?