Re: [Lynx-dev] urls longer than 1024 characters

[Tim Chase]

On 2023-01-26 00:36, Travis Siegel wrote:
> There is a limit, but I don't know what it is off hand.?? It's listed in one
> of the RFCs, though I don't remember which one.
>
> A quick search on google tells me RFC 1035 is the relevant RFC, and

Section 3.1.1 of RFC 7230 defines recommended URL length:

  It is RECOMMENDED that all HTTP senders and recipients support,
  at a minimum, request-line lengths of 8000 octets.

  https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7230#section-3.1.1

There were some long-standing limitations in certain browsers (glares
at IE) where URLs over 2000 characters would cause problems[1], but
most servers and user-agents should handle that just fine.

And according to RFC 2119, RECOMMENDED/SHOULD definitions:

  SHOULD:  This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that
  there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to
  ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be
  understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different
  course.

  https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119

So it sounds like Lynx should support at least 8000 bytes.
(and yes, acknowledging the difference between bytes, octets, and
characters)

-tim

[1]
Yes, in the early web-dev days before cookies, I tried maintaining
state in the URL, including username/password, and they'd fail in
some browsers because the URL length exceeded browser limits