Plugins:GenericHttpMethod

Status

Under Consideration

Problem Summary

1. The plugin API only supports GET and POST. It would be desirable to support other methods defined in RFC 2616, such as DELETE, OPTIONS, and PUT, and also extension methods such as PROPFIND (WebDAV) or PATCH.
2. HTTP request headers can only be set for POST (see NPN_PostURLNotify), but not for GET (NPN_GetURLNotify). This makes it hard to access content-negotiated resources.
3. There is unsufficient control over handling HTTP redirects (need details).
4. Confusion about how invalid URLs (for instance, containing non-ASCII characters or whitespace) need to be handled.

Existing Discussions and Documentation

Related Documentation

• XMLHttpRequest (demonstrates that browsers already support the required functionality and could be used to define certain behaviors, such as how request headers are defaulted and combined)
• Mark Nottingham's XmlHttpRequest Test Cases