HTTP "Expires" header should handle non-date values

[Daniel Hartwig]

Package: guile
Version: 2.0.3
Tags: patch

On 6 November 2011 13:49, R. P. Dillon <address@hidden> wrote:
> (use-modules (web request) (web response) (web uri) (rnrs bytevectors))
> (define port (socket PF_INET SOCK_STREAM 0))
> (define address (addrinfo:addr (car (getaddrinfo "www.google.com" "http"))))
> (connect port address)
> (define request (build-request (build-uri 'http #:host "www.google.com")))
> (write-request request port)
> (define response (read-response port))
> (read-response ...) consistently fails with Google:
> web/http.scm:754:6: In procedure parse-asctime-date:
> web/http.scm:754:6: Throw to key `bad-header' with args `(date "-1")'.
> The expiration is set to -1 in the headers, and this seems to cause a
> problem for the web libraries in Guile.
> This same request seems to work well for my own domain (killring.org).

This is definitely a bug on Guile's part, HTTP/1.1 permits such values
for "Expires" headers [1], treating them as though they were a date in
the past:

   HTTP/1.1 clients and caches MUST treat other invalid date formats,
   especially including the value "0", as in the past (i.e., "already
   expired").

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.21

Attached patch permits non-date values for "Expires", leaving them as
strings (preferable, as such responses can be transparently forwarded
to other clients). The staleness of a response could be determined
quite crudely, e.g.

(define (response-stale? r)
  (let ((expires (response-expires r)))
    (and expires
         (or (not (date? expires)) ;; Indicates already expired.
             (time<=? (date->time-utc expires)
                      (current-time))))))

This approach completely ignores the recommended way of determining
whether a response has expired.  See section 13.2.4 of the RFC for
calculations involving various factors such as the time that a request
was sent, "Cache-Control" directives, etc.


Regards

Daniel

0001-Permit-non-date-values-for-Expires-header.patch
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