[thelist] max length of a URL?

[Jay Greenspan]

on 5/30/01 2:19 PM, aardvark at roselli at earthlink.net wrote:

> does the HTTP spec have a max limit on how long a URL can be?
> is it governed (or would it be) by the HTTP spec?

 From RFC 2616:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html#sec3.2

The HTTP protocol does not place any a priori limit on the length of a URI.
Servers MUST be able to handle the URI of any resource they serve, and
SHOULD be able to handle URIs of unbounded length if they provide GET-based
forms that could generate such URIs. A server SHOULD return 414 (Request-URI
Too Long) status if a URI is longer than the server can handle (see section
10.4.15). 

      Note: Servers ought to be cautious about depending on URI lengths
      above 255 bytes, because some older client or proxy
      implementations might not properly support these lengths.

-j