Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol

The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP for short) is a protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots.

HTCPCP is specified in the jocular RFC 2324, published on April 1 1998. Although the RFC describing the protocol is an April fools joke and not to be taken seriously, it specifies the protocol itself accurately enough for it to be a real, non-fictional protocol. The powerful editor Emacs actually includes a fully functional implementation of it, and a number of patches exist to extend Mozilla in this direction.

HTCPCP is an extension of HTTP. HTCPCP requests are identified with the URI scheme coffee: (or the same word in any other of the 29 listed languages) and contain several additions to the HTTP methods:

• BREW or POST: Causes the HTCPCP server to brew coffee.
• GET: Retrieves coffee from the HTCPCP server.
• PROPFIND: Finds out metadata about the coffee.
• WHEN: Says "when", causing the HTCPCP server to stop pouring milk into the coffee (if applicable).

It also defines two error responses:

• 406 Not Applicable: The HTCPCP server is unable to brew coffee for some reason. The response should indicate a list of acceptable coffee types.
• 418 I'm a teapot: The HTCPCP server is a teapot. The responsing entity may be short and stout.

For more detailed specifications, see the HTCPCP RFC (RFC 2324).