W3C HTTP 1992

Object Contents

The data (if any) sent with an HTTP request or reply is in a format and encoding defined by the object header fields, the default being "plain/text" type with "8bit" encoding. Note that while all the other information in the request (just as in the reply) is in ISO Latin1 with lines delimited by Carriage Return/Line Feed pairs, the data may contain 8-bit binary data.

Termination

The delimiting of the message is determined by the Content-Length: field. If this is present, then the message contains the specified number of bytes.

Failing that, the content-type filed may contain a "bounday" attribute which gives the boundary string with exacly the same syntax as for a MIME multipart message.

Failing either of the above conditions, the data is terminated by the closing of the connection by the sending party. Note that this method can not be used for data sent with the request.

See also: note on server tolerance for back-compatibility, etc.