Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP) is a facetious communications protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots. It is specified in RFC 2324, published on 1 April 1998 as an April Fools' Day RFC,[1] as part of an April Fools prank.[2] An extension is published as RFC 7168 on 1 April 2014[3] to support brewing teas, which is also an April Fools' Day RFC.
Protocol
RFC 2324 was written by Larry Masinter, who describes it as a satire, saying "This has a serious purpose – it identifies many of the ways in which HTTP has been extended inappropriately."[4] The wording of the protocol made it clear that it wasn't entirely serious; noting, for example, that "there is a strong, dark, rich requirement for a protocol designed espressoly [sic] for the brewing of coffee".
Despite the joking nature of its origins, or perhaps because of it, the protocol has remained as a minor presence online. The editor Emacs includes a fully functional implementation of it,[5] and a number of bug reports exist complaining about Mozilla’s lack of support for the protocol.[6] Ten years after the publication of HTCPCP, the Web-Controlled Coffee Consortium (WC3) published a first draft of "HTCPCP Vocabulary in RDF"[7] in analogy of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) "HTTP Vocabulary in RDF".[8]
On April 1, 2014, RFC 7168 extended HTCPCP to fully handle teapots.[9]
Commands and replies
HTCPCP is an extension of HTTP. HTCPCP requests are identified with the URI scheme coffee: (or the corresponding 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. Using POST for this purpose is deprecated. A new HTTP Request header field "Accept-Additions" is proposed, supporting optional additions including Cream, Whole-milk, Vanilla, Raspberry, Whisky, Aquavit etc. |
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 provide the requested addition for some reason; the response should indicate a list of available additions. The RFC observes that "In practice, most automated coffee pots cannot currently provide additions." |
418 I'm a teapot |
The HTCPCP server is a teapot; the resulting entity body may be short and stout. Demonstrations of this behaviour exist.[10][11][12] |
See also
References
- ^ "Request for Comments 2324", Network Working Group, IETF.
- ^ DeNardis, Laura (30 September 2009). Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance. MIT Press. pp. 27–. ISBN 978-0-262-04257-4. Retrieved 8 May 2012.
- ^ "Request for Comments 7168", Independent Submission, IETF
- ^ Larry Masinter. "IETF RFCs". Archived from the original on 2013-04-11.
- ^ "Emacs extension: coffee.el", Emarsden, Chez.
- ^ "Bug 46647 – (coffeehandler) HTCPCP not supported (RFC2324)", Bugzilla, Mozilla.
- ^ HTCPCP Vocabulary in RDF – WC3 RFC Draft, Chief Arabica (Web-Controlled Coffee Consortium, 1 April 2008, retrieved 17 August 2009.
- ^ Koch, Johannes (ed.), HTTP Vocabulary in RDF, et al, W3, retrieved 17 August 2009.
- ^ "Request for Comments 7168", The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol for Tea Efflux Appliances (HTCPCP-TEA), IETF
- ^ Illustrated implementation of Error 418, UK: RHUL
{{citation}}:|first=missing|last=(help). - ^ Plain implementation of Error 418.
- ^ Raspberry Pi based implementation of Error 418.