Reverse HTTP
Revision as of 13:17, 13 May 2008 by Donovan Linden (talk | contribs) (New page: Reverse HTTP is an experimental protocol which takes advantage of the HTTP/1.1 Upgrade: header to turn one HTTP socket around. When a client makes a request to a server with the Upgrade: P...)
Reverse HTTP is an experimental protocol which takes advantage of the HTTP/1.1 Upgrade: header to turn one HTTP socket around. When a client makes a request to a server with the Upgrade: PTTH/1.0 header, the server may respond with an Upgrade: PTTH/1.0 header, after which point the server starts using the socket as a client, and the client starts using the socket as a server. There is also a COMET-style protocol which will work with HTTP/1.0 or 1.1 clients that do not know how to perform this upgrade.
Below is an example transcript using Reverse HTTP. Lines beginning with > are traffic from the client to the server. Lines beginning with < are traffic from the server to client.
>POST / HTTP/1.1 >Host: localhost:9999 >Accept-Encoding: identity >Upgrade: PTTH/1.0 > <HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols <Content-type: text-plain <Upgrade: PTTH/1.0 <Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 20:14:45 GMT <Content-Length: 0 < <GET / HTTP/1.1 <Host: 127.0.0.1:65331 <Accept-Encoding: identity <accept: text/plain;q=1,*/*;q=0 < >HTTP/1.1 200 OK >Content-type: text-plain >Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 20:14:45 GMT >Content-Length: 15 > >rdlrow ,olleH >