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' Day 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
orPOST
: 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 Acceptable
: 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 responding entity MAY be short and stout.491 Missing Coffee
: The HTCPCP is out of coffee and/or is out of milk.
External links
- RFC 2324, the full HTCPCP RFC specification.