I'll run through section by section ...
6.1 Buffering
ServletResponse.setBufferSize()
"This method must be called before any content is
written using a ServletOutputStream or Writer. If
any content has been written, this method must
throw an IllegalStateException"
Suppose I've written to the OutputStream, but not
enough to trigger a commit. I then call reset(). If
I now call setBufferSize() the quoted clause requires
that an IllegalStateException be thrown. But that
should be unecessary in this scenario.
6.2 Headers
setHeader() and addHeader() allow arbitrary HTTP
headers to be added to the response. A servlet
container may wish to reject some of those headers
if they're inappropriate ie.,
addHeader("Connection", "Keep-Alive");
would be inappropriate if the container was going to
be closing the connection (if the request contained
a 'Connection: close' for example).
Any of the following or similar are likely to be
bogus,
addHeader("Connection", "Server");
addHeader("Upgrade", "TLS/1.0");
It should either be documented that a container
might throw an exception if an inappropriate header
is set (my preferred option), or that some headers
might be silently modified or removed if required for
the proper operation of the container.
6.4 Internationalization
"For maximum benefit, the setLocale method should
be called by the developer before the getWriter
method of the ServletResponse interface is called.
This will ensure that the returned PrintWriter is
configured appropriately for the target Locale."
This presupposes that there's a defined mapping from
locales to character encodings. There isn't.
6.5 Closure of Response Object
The response object is considered to be closed,
"When the amount of content specified in the
setContentLength method of the response has been
written to the response"
Consider the following,
res.setContentLength(512);
out.write(... 1024 bytes ...);
The spec is silent on whether the content-length-
overrunning write should throw an exception (my
preferred option) or silently truncate the output.
Also, consider the following sequence of calls,
res.setBufferSize(2048);
out.write(... 1024 bytes ...);
res.setContentLength(512);
res.flushBuffer();
What should happen here? The buffer has been set
sufficiently large that the content-length-
overrunning write will not cause a commit, but the
subsequent setContentLength() conflicts with the
number of bytes already written to the response
buffer. There are several options here,
1. Silently truncate the buffer. Yuck.
2. Have setContentLength() throw an exception.
3. Require that setContentLength() either be called
before any output is written or not at all. If
setContentLength isn't called, then either
the content-length would be inferred from the
size of the output (if it fits in the buffer) or
chunked transfer encoding would be used (HTTP1.1)
or the connection would be closed (HTTP1.0).
This would be my preferred option.
8.3 Include
"The included servlet cannot set headers or call
any method that affects the headers of the response.
Any attempt to do so should be ignored"
An IllegalStateException would be better. Silently
ignoring explicit programmer requests is never a
good idea.
Cheers,
Miles
--
Miles Sabin Cromwell Media
Internet Systems Architect 5/6 Glenthorne Mews
+44 (0)181 410 2230 London, W6 0LJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED] England
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