Network Working GroupM. Nottingham
Internet-DraftNovember 4, 2015
Obsoletes: 5988 (if approved)
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: May 7, 2016

Web Linking

draft-nottingham-rfc5988bis-00

Abstract

This specification defines a way to indicate the relationships between resources on the Web (“links”) and the type of those relationships (“link relation types”).

It also defines the use of such links in HTTP headers with the Link header field.

Note to Readers

This is a work-in-progress to revise RFC5988.

The issues list can be found at https://github.com/mnot/I-D/labels/rfc5988bis.

The most recent (often, unpublished) draft is at https://mnot.github.io/I-D/rfc5988bis/.

Recent changes are listed at https://github.com/mnot/I-D/commits/gh-pages/rfc5988bis.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as “work in progress”.

This Internet-Draft will expire on May 7, 2016.

Copyright Notice

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1. Introduction

This specification defines a way to indicate the relationships between resources on the Web (“links”) and the type of those relationships (“link relation types”).

HTML [W3C.REC-html5-20141028] and Atom [RFC4287] both have well-defined concepts of linking; this specification generalises this into a framework that encompasses linking in these formats and (potentially) elsewhere.

Furthermore, this specification formalises an HTTP header field for conveying such links, having been originally defined in Section 19.6.2.4 of [RFC2068], but removed from [RFC2616].

2. Notational Conventions

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, [RFC2119], as scoped to those conformance targets.

This document uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation of [RFC7230], including the #rule, and explicitly includes the following rules from it: quoted-string, token, SP (space), LOALPHA, DIGIT.

Additionally, the following rules are included from [RFC3986]: URI and URI-Reference; from [RFC6838]: type-name and subtype-name; from [W3C.CR-css3-mediaqueries-20090915]: media_query_list; from [RFC5646]: Language-Tag; and from [I-D.ietf-httpbis-rfc5987bis], ext-value and parmname.

6. IANA Considerations

In addition to the actions below, IANA should terminate the Link Relation Application Data Registry, as it has not been used, and future use is not anticipated.

7. Security Considerations

The content of the Link header field is not secure, private or integrity-guaranteed, and due caution should be exercised when using it. Use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) with HTTP ([RFC2818] and [RFC2817]) is currently the only end-to-end way to provide such protection.

Applications that take advantage of typed links should consider the attack vectors opened by automatically following, trusting, or otherwise using links gathered from HTTP headers. In particular, Link headers that use the “anchor” parameter to associate a link’s context with another resource should be treated with due caution.

The Link entity-header field makes extensive use of IRIs and URIs. See [RFC3987] for security considerations relating to IRIs. See [RFC3986] for security considerations relating to URIs. See [RFC7230] for security considerations relating to HTTP headers.

8. Internationalisation Considerations

Link targets may need to be converted to URIs in order to express them in serialisations that do not support IRIs. This includes the Link HTTP header.

Similarly, the anchor parameter of the Link header does not support IRIs, and therefore IRIs must be converted to URIs before inclusion there.

Relation types are defined as URIs, not IRIs, to aid in their comparison. It is not expected that they will be displayed to end users.

Note that registered Relation Names are required to be lower-case ASCII letters.

9. References

9.1 Normative References

[I-D.ietf-httpbis-rfc5987bis]
Reschke, J., “Indicating Character Encoding and Language for HTTP Header Field Parameters”, Internet-Draft draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc5987bis-00 (work in progress), October 2015.
[RFC2026]
Bradner, S., “The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3”, BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2026>.
[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels”, BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC3864]
Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, “Registration Procedures for Message Header Fields”, BCP 90, RFC 3864, DOI 10.17487/RFC3864, September 2004, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3864>.
[RFC3986]
Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax”, STD 66, RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
[RFC3987]
Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs)”, RFC 3987, DOI 10.17487/RFC3987, January 2005, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3987>.
[RFC5226]
Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, “Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs”, BCP 26, RFC 5226, DOI 10.17487/RFC5226, May 2008, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5226>.
[RFC5646]
Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., “Tags for Identifying Languages”, BCP 47, RFC 5646, DOI 10.17487/RFC5646, September 2009, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5646>.
[RFC6838]
Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, “Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures”, BCP 13, RFC 6838, DOI 10.17487/RFC6838, January 2013, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6838>.
[RFC7230]
Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., “Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing”, RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.
[W3C.CR-css3-mediaqueries-20090915]
Lie, H., Çelik, T., Glazman, D., and A. Kesteren, “Media Queries”, World Wide Web Consortium CR CR-css3-mediaqueries-20090915, September 2009, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/CR-css3-mediaqueries-20090915>.

9.2 Informative References

[RFC2068]
Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., and T. Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1”, RFC 2068, DOI 10.17487/RFC2068, January 1997, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2068>.
[RFC2616]
Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1”, RFC 2616, DOI 10.17487/RFC2616, June 1999, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2616>.
[RFC2817]
Khare, R. and S. Lawrence, “Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1”, RFC 2817, DOI 10.17487/RFC2817, May 2000, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2817>.
[RFC2818]
Rescorla, E., “HTTP Over TLS”, RFC 2818, DOI 10.17487/RFC2818, May 2000, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2818>.
[RFC4287]
Nottingham, M., Ed. and R. Sayre, Ed., “The Atom Syndication Format”, RFC 4287, DOI 10.17487/RFC4287, December 2005, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4287>.
[W3C.REC-html-rdfa-20150317]
Sporny, M., “HTML+RDFa 1.1 - Second Edition”, World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-html-rdfa-20150317, March 2015, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/REC-html-rdfa-20150317>.
[W3C.REC-html5-20141028]
Hickson, I., Berjon, R., Faulkner, S., Leithead, T., Navara, E., O&#039;Connor, E., and S. Pfeiffer, “HTML5”, World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-html5-20141028, October 2014, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028>.
[W3C.REC-xml-names-20091208]
Bray, T., Hollander, D., Layman, A., Tobin, R., and H. Thompson, “Namespaces in XML 1.0 (Third Edition)”, World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xml-names-20091208, December 2009, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-xml-names-20091208>.

C. Changes from RFC5988

This specification has the following differences from its predecessor, RFC5988:

  • The initial relation type registrations were removed, since they’ve already been registered by 5988.
  • The introduction has been shortened.
  • The Link Relation Application Data Registry has been removed.
  • Incorporated errata.
  • Updated references.
  • Link cardinality was clarified.
  • Terminology was changed from “target IRI” and “context IRI” to “link target” and “link context” respectively.
  • A convention for assigning a URI to registered relation types was defined.
  • Removed misleading statement that the link header field is semantically equivalent to HTML and Atom links.
  • More carefully defined how the Experts and IANA should interact.