Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
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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 1 April 1998.[1] 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,[2] and a number of patches exist to extend Mozilla in this direction.[3]
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 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 |
See also
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