Debugging server resources

TRACE Method

Preliminaries

This note provides supplementary information about the server's implementation of the standard HTTP TRACE method, used for troubleshooting resource requests.

The TRACE request serves as a troubleshooting method to allow software engineers to ping the server and have it respond with a payload — with MIME type message/http — containing the request headers it received.

Request/response handlers

The server's request/response cycle for TRACE requests is fulfilled using this sequence of handlers:

	Request Handler	Optional	Configurable
1	Server Name Indication	no	no
2	Hosts	no	yes
3	IP Access	yes	yes
4	Resource Masks	yes	yes
5	Raw Path	no	no
6	Cookies	no	no
7	Forbidden	yes	yes
8	Cross Origin	yes	yes
9	RBAC	yes	yes
	Dynamic Handler	Optional	Configurable
10	Router	yes	yes
	Response Handler	Optional	Configurable
11	Sanitize *	no	no
12	Content Length	no	no
13	Status Codes	no	yes

* The sanitize handler removes any cookie values present in the orginal request headers, since they may contain sensitive data.

Status codes

TRACE requests always return status code 200.

For reference purposes, refer to IETF RFC 7231 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content section 4.3.8 for the basic protocol expected of HTTP TRACE requests.

This note describes the different configuration options that govern which HTTP methods are acceptable and applicable at the host level, and how to limit methods on resources that match a path-pattern.

RWSERVE, methods, HEAD, GET, PUT, DELETE, POST, PATCH, OPTIONS, TRACE, router, rbac, cross-origin, rw-method-not-allowed, 403

status codes, http2, OK, created, no content, partial content, found, see other, not modified, bad request, forbidden, not found, method not allowed, not acceptable, conflict, length required, precondition failes, URI too long, unsuppoerted media type, range not satisfiable, internal server error, not implemented

Debugging server resources

TRACE Method

Request/response handlers

Status codes

In-depth reading

Requests

Processing steps for each request method

These notes provide information on the sequence of steps taken when processing each incoming HTTP method.

RWSERVE, HTTP methods, delete, get, head, put, options, patch, post, trace

Methods

Declaring which HTTP methods are acceptable and applicable

This note describes the different configuration options that govern which HTTP methods are acceptable and applicable at the host level, and how to limit methods on resources that match a path-pattern.

RWSERVE, methods, HEAD, GET, PUT, DELETE, POST, PATCH, OPTIONS, TRACE, router, rbac, cross-origin, rw-method-not-allowed, 403

Status Codes

Explaining the conditions that trigger status codes

An explanation of what conditions trigger each status code in an HTTP/2 response.