HTTP规范中关于请求/响应中的message-body和entity-body

 

HTTP规范中关于请求/响应中的message-body和entity-body

 

请求

 

响应

 

并不是所有的请求响应消息中都包含内容：message body或者entity body。

 

大多数请求消息中不包含消息体。

 

 

 

在有些请求的响应中不包含响应内容。

 

比如，如果在请求消息中包含If-Modified-Since头字段，如：If-Modified-Since: Sat, 29 Oct 2014 19:43:31 GMT，如果被请求的资源在这个指定的时间之后都没有被修改过，将返回一个304 (not modified)，响应消息中不包含消息体部分，被请求的资源内容不会传输给客户端。

 

 

即便是在响应消息中，也可能不包含响应内容。

 

请求响应消息中是否包含消息体跟请求方式，如GET,POST等，请求响应中的header头部字段，是否有缓存等等。当然也看是否有数据需要进行传输。

 

message-body

message-body = entity-body

                        | <entity-body encoded as per Transfer-Encoding>

 

从这里的定义来看，message-body和entity-body基本上没什么区别。

 

entity-body

 

message-body和entity-body的区别

 

message-body和entity-body的区别在于消息中是否应用了transfer-coding，即在响应或请求消息中是否包含Transfer-Encoding通用头部。

 

来自https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616的引用：

写道

The message-body (if any) of an HTTP message is used to carry the
entity-body associated with the request or response. The message-body
differs from the entity-body only when a transfer-coding has been
applied, as indicated by the Transfer-Encoding header field (section
14.41).

message-body = entity-body
| <entity-body encoded as per Transfer-Encoding>

Transfer-Encoding MUST be used to indicate any transfer-codings
applied by an application to ensure safe and proper transfer of the
message. Transfer-Encoding is a property of the message, not of the

entity, and thus MAY be added or removed by any application along the
request/response chain. (However, section 3.6 places restrictions on
when certain transfer-codings may be used.)

The rules for when a message-body is allowed in a message differ for
requests and responses.

The presence of a message-body in a request is signaled by the
inclusion of a Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header field in
the request's message-headers. A message-body MUST NOT be included in
a request if the specification of the request method (section 5.1.1)
does not allow sending an entity-body in requests. A server SHOULD
read and forward a message-body on any request; if the request method
does not include defined semantics for an entity-body, then the
message-body SHOULD be ignored when handling the request.

For response messages, whether or not a message-body is included with
a message is dependent on both the request method and the response
status code (section 6.1.1). All responses to the HEAD request method
MUST NOT include a message-body, even though the presence of entity-
header fields might lead one to believe they do. All 1xx
(informational), 204 (no content), and 304 (not modified) responses
MUST NOT include a message-body. All other responses do include a
message-body, although it MAY be of zero length.