The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP for short) is a communications protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots. It is specified in RFC 2324, published on 1 April 1998[1] as part of an April Fools prank.[2] 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,[3] and a number of bug reports exist complaining about Mozilla’s lack of support for the protocol.[4] Ten years after the publication of HTCPCP, the Web-Controlled Coffee Consortium (WC3) published a first draft of "HTCPCP Vocabulary in RDF"[5] in analogy of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) "HTTP Vocabulary in RDF".[6]
The possibility and practicality of the HTCPCP and coffee pots implementing it are now rising back into the notice of the industry, as the Internet of Things rises into fame.[citation needed]
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. |
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 resulting entity body may be short and stout. Demonstrations of this behaviour exist.[7][8][9] |
See also
References
- ^ "Request for Comments 2324", Network Working Group, IETF, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324.
- ^ DeNardis, Laura (30 September 2009). Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance. MIT Press. pp. 27–. ISBN 978-0-262-04257-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=Secq z0XQJIsC&pg=PA27. Retrieved 8 May 2012.
- ^ "Emacs extension: coffee.el", Emarsden, Chez, http://emarsden.chez.com/downloads/.
- ^ "Bug 46647 – (coffeehandler) HTCPCP not supported (RFC2324)", Bugzilla, Mozilla, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug .cgi?id=46647.
- ^ HTCPCP Vocabulary in RDF – WC3 RFC Draft, Chief Arabica (Web-Controlled Coffee Consortium, 1 April 2008, http://purl.org/NET/error404/xp/HTCPC P-in-RDF/, retrieved 17 August 2009.
- ^ Koch, Johannes, ed., HTTP Vocabulary in RDF, et al, W3, http://www.w3.org/TR/HTTP-in-RDF/, retrieved 17 August 2009.
- ^ Illustrated implementation of Error 418, UK: RHUL, http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/home/joseph/ teapot.html.
- ^ Plain implementation of Error 418.
- ^ Raspberry Pi based implementation of Error 418.
|
---|
| April Fools' Days RFC | - IP over Avian Carriers
- Semaphore Flag Signaling System
- Management of IP numbers by peg-dhcp
- Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
- The Security Flag in the IPv4 Header (Evil Bit)
- UTF-9 and UTF-18 Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode
|
---|
| Full April Fools' Day RFC List |
|
|
---|
| Common | |
---|
| Infamous | - Abort, Retry, Fail?
- Bad command or file name
- Blue Screen of Death
- Can't extend
- HTTP 404
- lp0 on fire
- Not a typewriter
- PC LOAD LETTER
|
---|
| Humorous | |
---|
| Lists | |
---|
| HTTP | |
---|
| Related | |
---|
|