Internet-Draft Constrained Resource Identifiers July 2021
Bormann & Birkholz Expires 26 January 2022 [Page]
Workgroup:
CoRE Working Group
Internet-Draft:
draft-ietf-core-href-06
Published:
Intended Status:
Standards Track
Expires:
Authors:
C. Bormann, Ed.
Universität Bremen TZI
H. Birkholz
Fraunhofer SIT

Constrained Resource Identifiers

Abstract

The Constrained Resource Identifier (CRI) is a complement to the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that serializes the URI components in Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) instead of a sequence of characters. This simplifies parsing, comparison and reference resolution in environments with severe limitations on processing power, code size, and memory size.

Discussion Venues

This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

Discussion of this document takes place on the Constrained RESTful Environments Working Group mailing list (core@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/core/. Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/core-wg/href

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

This Internet-Draft will expire on 26 January 2022.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) [RFC3986] and its most common usage, the URI reference, are the Internet standard for linking to resources in hypertext formats such as HTML [W3C.REC-html52-20171214] or the HTTP "Link" header field [RFC8288].

A URI reference is a sequence of characters chosen from the repertoire of US-ASCII characters. The individual components of a URI reference are delimited by a number of reserved characters, which necessitates the use of a character escape mechanism called "percent-encoding" when these reserved characters are used in a non-delimiting function. The resolution of URI references involves parsing a character sequence into its components, combining those components with the components of a base URI, merging path components, removing dot-segments, and recomposing the result back into a character sequence.

Overall, the proper handling of URI references is quite intricate. This can be a problem especially in constrained environments [RFC7228], where nodes often have severe code size and memory size limitations. As a result, many implementations in such environments support only an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, non-interoperable subset of half of RFC 3986.

This document defines the Constrained Resource Identifier (CRI) by constraining URIs to a simplified subset and serializing their components in Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) [RFC8949] instead of a sequence of characters. This allows typical operations on URI references such as parsing, comparison and reference resolution (including all corner cases) to be implemented in a comparatively small amount of code.

As a result of simplification, however, CRIs are not capable of expressing all URIs permitted by the generic syntax of RFC 3986 (hence the "constrained" in "Constrained Resource Identifier"). The supported subset includes all URIs of the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) [RFC7252], most URIs of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) [RFC7230], Uniform Resource Names (URNs) [RFC8141], and other similar URIs. The exact constraints are defined in Section 2.

1.1. Notational Conventions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

In this specification, the term "byte" is used in its now customary sense as a synonym for "octet".

Terms defined in this document appear in cursive where they are introduced (rendered in plain text as the new term surrounded by underscores).

2. Constraints

A Constrained Resource Identifier consists of the same five components as a URI: scheme, authority, path, query, and fragment. The components are subject to the following constraints:

C1.
The scheme name can be any Unicode string (see Definition D80 in [Unicode]) that matches the syntax of a URI scheme (see Section 3.1 of [RFC3986], which constrains schemes to ASCII) and is lowercase (see Definition D139 in [Unicode]). The scheme is always present.
C2.
An authority is always a host identified by an IP address or registered name, along with optional port information. User information is not supported. The authority can be absent; in [RFC3986], in this case the path can be rootless or, as when he authority is present, begin with a root ("/"); this is modelled by two different values for an absent authority.
C3.
An IP address can be either an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address, optionally with a zone identifier [RFC6874]. Future versions of IP are not supported.
C4.
A registered name is a sequence of one or more labels, which, when joined with dots (".") in between them, result in a Unicode string that is lowercase and in Unicode Normalization Form C (NFC) (see Definition D120 in [Unicode]). (The syntax may be further restricted by the scheme.)
C5.
A port is always an integer in the range from 0 to 65535. Empty ports or ports outside this range are not supported.
C6.
The port is omitted if and only if the port would be the same as the scheme's default port (provided the scheme is defining such a default port) or the scheme is not using ports.
C7.
A path consists of zero or more path segments. A path must not consist of a single zero-length path segment, which is considered equivalent to a path of zero path segments.
C8.
A path segment can be any Unicode string that is in NFC, with the exception of the special "." and ".." complete path segments. It can be the zero-length string. No special constraints are placed on the first path segment.
C9.
A query always consists of one or more query parameters. A query parameter can be any Unicode string that is in NFC. It is often in the form of a "key=value" pair. When converting a CRI to a URI, query parameters are separated by an ampersand ("&") character. (This matches the structure and encoding of the target URI in CoAP requests.) Queries are optional; there is a difference between an absent query and a single query parameter that is the empty string.
C10.
A fragment identifier can be any Unicode string that is in NFC. Fragment identifiers are optional; there is a difference between an absent fragment identifier and a fragment identifier that is the empty string.
C11.
The syntax of registered names, path segments, query parameters, and fragment identifiers may be further restricted and sub-structured by the scheme. There is no support, however, for escaping sub-delimiters that are not intended to be used in a delimiting function.
C12.
When converting a CRI to a URI, any character that is outside the allowed character range or is a delimiter in the URI syntax is percent-encoded. For CRIs, percent-encoding always uses the UTF-8 encoding form (see Definition D92 in [Unicode]) to convert the character to a sequence of bytes (that is then converted to a sequence of %HH triplets).

3. Creation and Normalization

In general, resource identifiers are created on the initial creation of a resource with a certain resource identifier, or the initial exposition of a resource under a particular resource identifier.

A Constrained Resource Identifier SHOULD be created by the naming authority that governs the namespace of the resource identifier (see also [RFC8820]). For example, for the resources of an HTTP origin server, that server is responsible for creating the CRIs for those resources.

The naming authority MUST ensure that any CRI created satisfies the constraints defined in Section 2. The creation of a CRI fails if the CRI cannot be validated to satisfy all of the constraints.

If a naming authority creates a CRI from user input, it MAY apply the following (and only the following) normalizations to get the CRI more likely to validate:

Once a CRI has been created, it can be used and transferred without further normalization. All operations that operate on a CRI SHOULD rely on the assumption that the CRI is appropriately pre-normalized. (This does not contradict the requirement that when CRIs are transferred, recipients must operate on as-good-as untrusted input and fail gracefully in the face of malicious inputs.)

4. Comparison

One of the most common operations on CRIs is comparison: determining whether two CRIs are equivalent, without dereferencing the CRIs (using them to access their respective resource(s)).

Determination of equivalence or difference of CRIs is based on simple component-wise comparison. If two CRIs are identical component-by-component (using code-point-by-code-point comparison for components that are Unicode strings) then it is safe to conclude that they are equivalent.

This comparison mechanism is designed to minimize false negatives while strictly avoiding false positives. The constraints defined in Section 2 imply the most common forms of syntax- and scheme-based normalizations in URIs, but do not comprise protocol-based normalizations that require accessing the resources or detailed knowledge of the scheme's dereference algorithm. False negatives can be caused, for example, by CRIs that are not appropriately pre-normalized and by resource aliases.

When CRIs are compared to select (or avoid) a network action, such as retrieval of a representation, fragment components (if any) should be excluded from the comparison.

5. CRI References

The most common usage of a Constrained Resource Identifier is to embed it in resource representations, e.g., to express a hyperlink between the represented resource and the resource identified by the CRI.

This section defines the serialization of CRIs in Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) [RFC8949]. To reduce representation size, CRIs are not serialized directly. Instead, CRIs are indirectly referenced through CRI references. These take advantage of hierarchical locality and provide a very compact encoding. The CBOR serialization of CRI references is specified in Section 5.1.

The only operation defined on a CRI reference is reference resolution: the act of transforming a CRI reference into a CRI. An application MUST implement this operation by applying the algorithm specified in Section 5.3 (or any algorithm that is functionally equivalent to it).

The reverse operation of transforming a CRI into a CRI reference is unspecified; implementations are free to use any algorithm as long as reference resolution of the resulting CRI reference yields the original CRI. Notably, a CRI reference is not required to satisfy all of the constraints of a CRI; the only requirement on a CRI reference is that reference resolution MUST yield the original CRI.

When testing for equivalence or difference, applications SHOULD NOT directly compare CRI references; the references should be resolved to their respective CRI before comparison.

5.1. CBOR Serialization

A CRI reference is encoded as a CBOR array [RFC8949], with the structure as described in the Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL) [RFC8610] as follows:

; not expressed in this CDDL spec: trailing nulls to be left off

CRI-Reference = [
  ((scheme / null, authority / null / true)
   // discard),                 ; relative reference
  path / null,
  query / null,
  fragment / null
]

scheme      = scheme-name / scheme-id
scheme-name = text .regexp "[a-z][a-z0-9+.-]*"
scheme-id   = (COAP / COAPS / HTTP / HTTPS / other-scheme)
              .within nint
COAP = -1 COAPS = -2 HTTP = -3 HTTPS = -4
other-scheme = nint .feature "scheme-id-extension"

authority   = [host, ?port]
host        = (host-name // host-ip)
host-name   = (*text) ; lowercase, NFC labels
host-ip     = (bytes .size 4 //
               (bytes .size 16, ?zone-id))
zone-id     = text
port        = 0..65535

discard     = true / 0..127
path        = [*text]
query       = [*text]
fragment    = text

This CDDL specification is simplified for exposition and needs to be augmented by the following rule for interchange: Trailing null values are removed, and two leading null values (scheme and authority both not given) are represented by using the discard alternative instead. A complete CDDL specification is given in Appendix A.

The rules scheme, authority, path, query, fragment correspond to the (sub-)components of a CRI, as described in Section 2, with the addition of the discard section. The discard section can be used when neither a scheme nor an authority is present. It then expresses path prefixes such as "/", "./", "../", "../../", etc. The exact semantics of the section values are defined by Section 5.3.

Most URI references that Section 4.2 of [RFC3986] calls "relative references" (i.e., references that need to undergo a resolution process to obtain a URI) correspond to the CRI form that starts with discard. The exception are relative references with an authority (called a "network-path reference" in Section 4.2 of [RFC3986]), which in CRI references never carry a discard section (the value of discard defaults to true).

Examples:

[-1,             / scheme -- equivalent to "coap" /
 [h'C6336401',   / host /
  61616],        / port /
 [".well-known", / path /
  "core"]
]

[true,                  / discard /
 [".well-known",        / path /
  "core"],
 ["rt=temperature-c"]]  / query /

A CRI reference is considered well-formed if it matches the CDDL structure.

A CRI reference is considered absolute if it is well-formed and the sequence of sections starts with a non-null scheme.

A CRI reference is considered relative if it is well-formed and the sequence of sections is empty or starts with a section other than those that would constitute a scheme.

5.2. Ingesting and encoding a CRI Reference

From an abstract point of view, a CRI Reference is a data structure with six sections:

scheme, authority, discard, path, query, fragment

Each of these sections can be unset ("null"), except for discard, which is always an unsigned number or true. If scheme and/or authority are non-null, discard must be true.

When ingesting a CRI Reference that is in the transfer form, those sections are filled in from the transfer form (unset sections are filled with null), and the following steps are performed:

  • If the array is entirely empty, replace it with [0].
  • If discard is present in the transfer form (i.e., the outer array starts with true or an unsigned number), set scheme and authority to null.
  • If scheme and/or authority are present in the transfer form (i.e., the outer array starts with null, a text string, or a negative integer), set discard to true.

Upon encoding the abstract form into the transfer form, the inverse processing is performed: If scheme and/or authority are not null, the discard value is not transferred (it must be true in this case). If they are both null, they are both left out and only discard is transferred. Trailing null values are removed from the array. As a special case, an empty array is sent in place for a remaining [0] (URI "").

5.3. Reference Resolution

The term "relative" implies that a "base CRI" exists against which the relative reference is applied. Aside from fragment-only references, relative references are only usable when a base CRI is known.

The following steps define the process of resolving any well-formed CRI reference against a base CRI so that the result is a CRI in the form of an absolute CRI reference:

  1. Establish the base CRI of the CRI reference and express it in the form of an abstract absolute CRI reference.
  2. Initialize a buffer with the sections from the base CRI.
  3. If the value of discard is true in the CRI reference, replace the path in the buffer with the empty array, unset query and fragment, and set a true authority to null. If the value of discard is an unsigned number, remove as many elements from the end of the path array; if it is non-zero, unset query and fragment. Set discard to true in the buffer.
  4. If the path section is set in the CRI reference, append all elements from the path array to the array in the path section in the buffer; unset query and fragment.
  5. Apart from the path and discard, copy all non-null sections from the CRI reference to the buffer in sequence; unset fragment if query is non-null and thus copied.
  6. Return the sections in the buffer as the resolved CRI.

6. Relationship between CRIs, URIs and IRIs

CRIs are meant to replace both Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) [RFC3986] and Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) [RFC3987] in constrained environments [RFC7228]. Applications in these environments may never need to use URIs and IRIs directly, especially when the resource identifier is used simply for identification purposes or when the CRI can be directly converted into a CoAP request.

However, it may be necessary in other environments to determine the associated URI or IRI of a CRI, and vice versa. Applications can perform these conversions as follows:

CRI to URI

A CRI is converted to a URI as specified in Section 6.1.

URI to CRI

The method of converting a URI to a CRI is unspecified; implementations are free to use any algorithm as long as converting the resulting CRI back to a URI yields an equivalent URI.

CRI to IRI

A CRI can be converted to an IRI by first converting it to a URI as specified in Section 6.1, and then converting the URI to an IRI as described in Section 3.2 of [RFC3987].

IRI to CRI

An IRI can be converted to a CRI by first converting it to a URI as described in Section 3.1 of [RFC3987], and then converting the URI to a CRI as described above.

Everything in this section also applies to CRI references, URI references and IRI references.

6.1. Converting CRIs to URIs

Applications MUST convert a CRI reference to a URI reference by determining the components of the URI reference according to the following steps and then recomposing the components to a URI reference string as specified in Section 5.3 of [RFC3986].

scheme

If the CRI reference contains a scheme section, the scheme component of the URI reference consists of the value of that section. Otherwise, the scheme component is unset.

authority

If the CRI reference contains a host-name or host-ip item, the authority component of the URI reference consists of a host subcomponent, optionally followed by a colon (":") character and a port subcomponent. Otherwise, the authority component is unset.

The host subcomponent consists of the value of the host-name or host-ip item.

The host-name is turned into a single string by joining the elements separated by dots ("."). Any character in the value of a host-name item that is not in the set of unreserved characters (Section 2.3 of [RFC3986]) or "sub-delims" (Section 2.2 of [RFC3986]) MUST be percent-encoded.

The value of a host-ip item MUST be represented as a string that matches the "IPv4address" or "IP-literal" rule (Section 3.2.2 of [RFC3986]). Any zone-id is appended to the string, separated by "%25" as defined in Section 2 of [RFC6874], or as specified in a successor zone-id specification document; this also leads to a modified "IP-literal" rule as specified in these documents.

If the CRI reference contains a port item, the port subcomponent consists of the value of that item in decimal notation. Otherwise, the colon (":") character and the port subcomponent are both omitted.

path

If the CRI reference contains a discard item of value true, the path component is prefixed by a slash ("/") character. If it contains a discard item of value 0 and the path item is present, the conversion fails. Otherwise, the path component is prefixed by as many "../" components as the discard value minus one indicates.

If the discard item is not present and the CRI reference contains an authority that is true, the path component of the URI reference is prefixed by the zero-length string. Otherwise, the path component is prefixed by a slash ("/") character.

If the CRI reference contains one or more path items, the prefix is followed by the value of each item, separated by a slash ("/") character.

Any character in the value of a path item that is not in the set of unreserved characters or "sub-delims" or a colon (":") or commercial at ("@") character MUST be percent-encoded.

If the authority component is present (not null or true) and the path component does not match the "path-abempty" rule (Section 3.3 of [RFC3986]), the conversion fails.

If the authority component is not present, but the scheme component is, and the path component does not match the "path-absolute", "path-rootless" (authority == true) or "path-empty" rule (Section 3.3 of [RFC3986]), the conversion fails.

If neither the authority component nor the scheme component are present, and the path component does not match the "path-absolute", "path-noscheme" or "path-empty" rule (Section 3.3 of [RFC3986]), the conversion fails.

query

If the CRI reference contains one or more query items, the query component of the URI reference consists of the value of each item, separated by an ampersand ("&") character. Otherwise, the query component is unset.

Any character in the value of a query item that is not in the set of unreserved characters or "sub-delims" or a colon (":"), commercial at ("@"), slash ("/") or question mark ("?") character MUST be percent-encoded. Additionally, any ampersand character ("&") in the item value MUST be percent-encoded.

fragment

If the CRI reference contains a fragment item, the fragment component of the URI reference consists of the value of that item. Otherwise, the fragment component is unset.

Any character in the value of a fragment item that is not in the set of unreserved characters or "sub-delims" or a colon (":"), commercial at ("@"), slash ("/") or question mark ("?") character MUST be percent-encoded.

7. Implementation Status

With the exception of the authority=true fix and host-names split into labels, CRIs are implemented in https://gitlab.com/chrysn/micrurus.

8. Security Considerations

Parsers of CRI references must operate on input that is assumed to be untrusted. This means that parsers MUST fail gracefully in the face of malicious inputs. Additionally, parsers MUST be prepared to deal with resource exhaustion (e.g., resulting from the allocation of big data items) or exhaustion of the call stack (stack overflow). See Section 10 of [RFC8949] for additional security considerations relating to CBOR.

The security considerations discussed in Section 7 of [RFC3986] and Section 8 of [RFC3987] for URIs and IRIs also apply to CRIs.

9. IANA Considerations

This document has no IANA actions.

10. References

10.1. Normative References

[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC3986]
Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
[RFC3987]
Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, "Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs)", RFC 3987, DOI 10.17487/RFC3987, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3987>.
[RFC6874]
Carpenter, B., Cheshire, S., and R. Hinden, "Representing IPv6 Zone Identifiers in Address Literals and Uniform Resource Identifiers", RFC 6874, DOI 10.17487/RFC6874, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6874>.
[RFC8174]
Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8610]
Birkholz, H., Vigano, C., and C. Bormann, "Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL): A Notational Convention to Express Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and JSON Data Structures", RFC 8610, DOI 10.17487/RFC8610, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8610>.
[RFC8949]
Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)", STD 94, RFC 8949, DOI 10.17487/RFC8949, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8949>.
[Unicode]
The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version 13.0.0", ISBN 978-1-936213-26-9, , <https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/>.

10.2. Informative References

[RFC7228]
Bormann, C., Ersue, M., and A. Keranen, "Terminology for Constrained-Node Networks", RFC 7228, DOI 10.17487/RFC7228, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7228>.
[RFC7230]
Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing", RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.
[RFC7252]
Shelby, Z., Hartke, K., and C. Bormann, "The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7252, DOI 10.17487/RFC7252, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7252>.
[RFC8141]
Saint-Andre, P. and J. Klensin, "Uniform Resource Names (URNs)", RFC 8141, DOI 10.17487/RFC8141, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8141>.
[RFC8288]
Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 8288, DOI 10.17487/RFC8288, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8288>.
[RFC8820]
Nottingham, M., "URI Design and Ownership", BCP 190, RFC 8820, DOI 10.17487/RFC8820, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8820>.
[W3C.REC-html52-20171214]
Faulkner, S., Eicholz, A., Leithead, T., Danilo, A., and S. Moon, "HTML 5.2", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-html52-20171214, , <https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-html52-20171214>.

Appendix A. CDDL specification

The full CDDL specification is somewhat redundant internally in order to express trailing null suppression.

; expressing null suppression

CRI-Reference = [
  ?( ((scheme, (authority / null / true)
       // (null, authority))
     // discard),                 ; relative reference
     ?( (path / null, query / null, fragment) //
        (path / null, query) //
         path)
  )
]

scheme      = scheme-name / scheme-id
scheme-name = text .regexp "[a-z][a-z0-9+.-]*"
scheme-id   = (COAP / COAPS / HTTP / HTTPS / other-scheme)
              .within nint
COAP = -1 COAPS = -2 HTTP = -3 HTTPS = -4
other-scheme = nint .feature "scheme-id-extension"

authority   = [host, ?port]
host        = (host-name // host-ip)
host-name   = (*text) ; lowercase, NFC labels
host-ip     = (bytes .size 4 //
               (bytes .size 16, ?zone-id))
zone-id     = text
port        = 0..65535

discard     = true / 0..127
path        = [*text]
query       = [*text]
fragment    = text

Appendix B. Change Log

This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

Changes from -05 to -06

Changes from -04 to -05

Changes from -03 to -04:

Changes from -02 to -03:

Changes from -01 to -02:

Changes from -00 to -01:

Acknowledgements

CRIs were developed by Klaus Hartke for use in the Constrained RESTful Application Language (CoRAL). The current author team is completing this work with a view to achieve good integration with the potential use cases, both inside and outside of CoRAL.

Thanks to Christian Amsüss, Ari Keränen, Jim Schaad and Dave Thaler for helpful comments and discussions that have shaped the document.

Contributors

Klaus Hartke
Ericsson
Torshamnsgatan 23
SE-16483 Stockholm
Sweden

Authors' Addresses

Carsten Bormann (editor)
Universität Bremen TZI
Postfach 330440
D-28359 Bremen
Germany
Phone: +49-421-218-63921
Henk Birkholz
Fraunhofer SIT
Rheinstrasse 75
64295 Darmstadt
Germany