I've searched a lot but I can't find a good answer to this question.
Being a HATEOAS aficionado, I would think that this header fit perfectly:
Range: item=1-20/100
In the HTTP spec, I don't understand some "contradictions":
The range unit can accept "other-range-unit"...
range-unit = bytes-unit | other-range-unit
bytes-unit = "bytes"
other-range-unit = token
... yet the spec is later explicit:
The only range unit defined by HTTP/1.1 is "bytes". HTTP/1.1 implementations MAY ignore ranges specified using other units.
Finally the spec ends with this statement:
HTTP/1.1 has been designed to allow implementations of applications that do not depend on knowledge of ranges.
- Is any other unit than byte allowed ?
- If HTTP/1.1 was designed to allow app to not depend on range, what are the real drawback about relying on it for an API ?
NB: I don't care about "browsability".
Here the answers that I gently borrowed from this question thanks to @ptidel: Content-Range header - allowed units?.
First, custom units are proposed in this draft HTTP/1.1, part 5: Range Requests and Partial Responses
Second, there is a subtle difference, the first statement has been made for parsing purpose
range-unit = bytes-unit | other-range-unit
bytes-unit = "bytes"
other-range-unit = token
While the second statement has been made for producing HTTP request.
Finally, the whole comment from Ferenc Mihaly summarizes perfectly the situation:
I conform to the HTTP spec when I'm sending [a custom range unit] and they conform to HTTP when they ignore it
WebDAV uses HTTP extensions correctly, IMO, but rarely works over the Internet for exactly this reason
Most of the times you don't want to show all of your items by default. With ?p=2 style pages it's ok to reserve root / for first page. With "Range" header it would be strange behavior. HTTP became overbloated long time ago so I wouldn't recommend to accept every its headers as Truth.
