Specify header value restrictions

Fixes grpc/grpc-experiments#266
mike07026 · Nov 5, 2015 · c6059e6 · c6059e6
1 parent 87bd2f0
commit c6059e6
Showing 1 changed file with 19 additions and 1 deletion.
diff --git a/doc/PROTOCOL-HTTP2.md b/doc/PROTOCOL-HTTP2.md
@@ -44,8 +44,9 @@ Request-Headers are delivered as HTTP2 headers in HEADERS + CONTINUATION frames.
 * **Message-Type** → "grpc-message-type" {_type name for message schema_}
 * **Custom-Metadata** → Binary-Header / ASCII-Header
 * **Binary-Header** → {Header-Name "-bin" } {_base64 encoded value_}
-* **ASCII-Header** → Header-Name {_value_}
+* **ASCII-Header** → Header-Name ASCII-Value
 * **Header-Name** → 1\*( %x30-39 / %x61-7A / "\_" / "-") ; 0-9 a-z \_ -
+* **ASCII-Value** → 1\*( %x20-%x7E ) ; space and printable ASCII
 
 
 HTTP2 requires that reserved headers, ones starting with ":" appear before all other headers. Additionally implementations should send **Timeout** immediately after the reserved headers and they should send the **Call-Definition** headers before sending **Custom-Metadata**.
@@ -56,6 +57,23 @@ If **Timeout** is omitted a server should assume an infinite timeout. Client imp
 
 Note that HTTP2 does not allow arbitrary octet sequences for header values so binary header values must be encoded using Base64 as per https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4648#section-4. Implementations MUST accept padded and un-padded values and should emit un-padded values. Applications define binary headers by having their names end with "-bin". Runtime libraries use this suffix to detect binary headers and properly apply base64 encoding & decoding as headers are sent and received.
 
+**Custom-Metadata** header order is not guaranteed to be preserved except for
+values with duplicate header names. Duplicate header names may have their values
+joined with "," as the delimiter and be considered semantically equivalent.
+Implementations must split **Binary-Header**s on "," before decoding the
+Base64-encoded values.
+
+**ASCII-Value** should not have leading or trailing whitespace. If it contains
+leading or trailing whitespace, it may be stripped. The **ASCII-Value**
+character range defined is more strict than HTTP. Implementations must not error
+due to receiving an invalid **ASCII-Value** but value valid in HTTP, but the
+precise behavior is not strictly defined: they may throw the value away or
+accept the value. If accepted, care must be taken to make sure that the
+application is permitted to echo the value back as metadata. For example, if the
+metadata is provided to the application as a list in a request, the application
+should not trigger an error by providing that same list as the metadata in the
+response.
+
 Servers may limit the size of **Request-Headers**, with a default of 8 KiB
 suggested.  Implementations are encouraged to compute total header size like
 HTTP/2's `SETTINGS_MAX_HEADER_LIST_SIZE`: the sum of all header fields, for each