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RFC 2935
Network Working Group D. Eastlake
Request for Comments: 2935 Motorola
Category: Standards Track C. Smith
Royal Bank of Canada
September 2000
Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP) HTTP Supplement
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP) messages will be carried as
Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents. As such, the goal of
mapping to the transport layer is to ensure that the underlying XML
documents are carried successfully between the various parties.
This document describes that mapping for the Hyper Text Transport
Protocol (HTTP), Versions 1.0 and 1.1.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction................................................... 2
2. HTTP Servers and Clients....................................... 2
3. HTTP Net Locations............................................. 2
4. Consumer Clients............................................... 2
4.1 Starting the IOTP Client and the Merchant IOTP Server.......... 3
4.2 Ongoing IOTP Messages.......................................... 3
4.3 Stopping an IOTP Transaction................................... 4
5. Starting the Payment handler and Deliverer IOTP Servers........ 5
6. Security Considerations........................................ 5
7. IANA Considerations............................................ 5
8. References..................................................... 6
9. Authors' Addresses............................................. 7
10. Full Copyright Statement....................................... 9
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RFC 2935 IOTP HTTP Supplement September 2000
1. Introduction
Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP) [RFC2801] messages will be
carried as XML [XML] documents. As such, the goal of mapping to the
transport layer is to ensure that the underlying XML documents are
carried successfully between the various parties.
This document describes that mapping for the Hyper Text Transport
Protocol (HTTP), Versions 1.0 and 1.1 [RFCs 1945, 2616].
There may be future documents describing IOTP over email (SMTP), TCP,
cable TV, or other transports.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
2. HTTP Servers and Clients
The structure of IOTP maps on to the structure of HTTP in the
following way:
The merchant, payment handler, delivery handler, and customer care
roles are all represented by HTTP servers. Each may be
represented by a separate server, or they may be combined in any
combination.
The consumer role is represented by an HTTP client.
Note: A Merchant, may act in the role of a consumer, for example to
deposit electronic cash. In this case the Merchant, as an
organization rather than as a role, would need to be supported by an
HTTP client.
3. HTTP Net Locations
The Net Locations contained within the IOTP specification are all
URIs [RFC 2396]. If a secure connection is required or desired a
secure channel that both the HTTP Server and Client support MUST be
used. Examples of such channels are SSL version 3 or TLS [RFC 2246].
4. Consumer Clients
In most environments, the consumer agent will initially be an HTML
browser. However, current browsers do not provide the needed
capability to act as an agent for the consumer for an IOTP
transaction. This leads to two requirements:
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RFC 2935 IOTP HTTP Supplement September 2000
a method of starting and passing control to the IOTP client, and
a method of closing down the IOTP client cleanly and passing control
back to the HTML browser once the IOTP Transaction has finished.
4.1 Starting the IOTP Client and the Merchant IOTP Server
At some point, the HTTP client at the consumer will send an HTTP
request that is interpreted as an "IOTP Startup Request" by the
Merchant HTTP server. This might, for example, be the result of
clicking on a "pay" button. This message is a stand-in for a request
message of some form and the Merchant Server will respond with the
first IOTP Message in the form of an XML document.
The MIME type for all IOTP messages is: "APPLICATION/IOTP"; however
"APPLICATION/X-IOTP" has been in use for experimentation and
development and SHOULD also be recognized. See section 7 below for
the MIME type registration template for APPLICATION/IOTP. Because
HTTP is binary clean, no content-transfer-encoding is required. (See
[RFC 2376] re the application/xml type which has some similar
considerations.)
This HTTP response will be interpreted by the HTML browser as a
request to start the application associated with MIME type
"APPLICATION/IOTP", and to pass the content of this message to that
application.
At this point, the IOTP client will be started and have the first
message.
IOTP messages are short-lived. Therefore, the HTTP server SHOULD
avoid having its responses cached. In HTTP V1.0, the "nocache"
pragma can be used. This can be neglected on SSL/TLS secured
connections which are not cached and on HTTP POST requests in HTTP
v1.1 as in v1.1 POST responses are not cached.
4.2 Ongoing IOTP Messages
Data from earlier IOTP Messages in a transaction MUST be retained by
the IOTP Client so that it may (1) be copied to make up part of later
IOTP messages, (2) used in calculations to verify signatures in later
IOTP message, (3) be resent in some cases where a request has timed
out without response, (4) used as input to the Customer Care role in
later versions of IOTP, etc. The way in which the data is copied
depends on the IOTP Transaction. The data MUST be retained until the
end of the transaction, whether by success, failure, or cancelation,
and as long thereafter as it is desired for any of the parties to
inquire into it.
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RFC 2935 IOTP HTTP Supplement September 2000
The IOTP messages contain Net Locations (e.g. the PayReqNetLocn)
which for HTTP will contain the URIs to which the IOTP client MUST
send IOTP messages.
Subsequent IOTP messages (XML documents) will be sent using the POST
function of HTTP. The HTTP client MUST perform full HTTP POST
requests.
The XML documents MUST be sent in a manner compatible with the
external encodings allowed by the XML [XML] specification.
4.3 Stopping an IOTP Transaction
The following should be read in conjunction with [RFC 2801].
An IOTP Transaction is complete when
-- the IOTP client decides to fail the IOTP Transaction for some
reason either by canceling the transaction or as a result of
discovering an error in an IOTP message received, or
-- a "time out" occurs or a connection fails, e.g. a response to an
IOTP Message, has not been received after some user-defined period
of Time (including retransmissions).
An IOTP Client which processes an IOTP Transaction which:
-- completes successfully (i.e. it has not received an Error Block
with a HardError or a Cancel Block) MUST direct the browser to the
Net Location specified in SuccessNetLocn in the Protocol Options
Component, i.e., cause it to do an HTTP GET with that URL.
-- does not complete successfully, because it has received some Error
Trading Block, MUST display the information in the Error Message,
stop the transaction, and pass control to the browser so that it
will do a GET on the Error Net Location specified for the role
from which the error was received.
-- is cancelled since a Cancel Block has been received, MUST stop the
IOTP Transaction and hand control to the browser so that it will
do a GET on the on the Cancel Net Location specified for the role
from which the Cancel Block was received.
-- is in error because an IOTP Message does not conform to this
specification, MUST send an IOTP Message containing a Error
Trading Block to role from which the erroneous message was
received and the ErrorLogNetLoc specified for that role, stop the
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RFC 2935 IOTP HTTP Supplement September 2000
IOTP Transaction, and hand control to the browser so that it will
do a GET from the Error Net Location specified for the role from
which the bad message was received.
-- has a "time out", MUST display a message describing the time out.
May give the user the option of cancelling or retrying and/or may
automatically retry. On failure due to time out, treat as an
error above.
Each implementation of an IOTP client may decide whether or not to
terminate the IOTP Client application immediately upon completing an
IOTP Transaction or whether to wait until it is closed down as a
result of, for example, user shut down or browser shut down.
5. Starting the Payment handler and Deliverer IOTP Servers
Payment Handler and Deliverer IOTP Servers are started by receiving
an IOTP Message which contains:
-- for a Payment handler, a Payment Request Block, and
-- for a Delivery Handler, a Delivery Request Block
6. Security Considerations
Security of Internet Open Trade Protocol messages is primarily
dependent on signatures within IOTP as described in [RFC 2801] and
[RFC 2802]. Privacy protection for IOTP interactions can be obtained
by using a secure channel for IOTP messages, such as SSL/TLS [RFC
2246].
Note that the security of payment protocols transported by IOTP is
the responsibility of those payment protocols, NOT of IOTP.
7. IANA Considerations
This specification defines the APPLICATION/IOTP MIME type. The
registration template is as follows [RFC 2048]:
To: ietf-types@iana.org
Subject: Registration of MIME media type APPLICATION/IOTP
MIME media type name: APPLICATION
MIME subtype name: IOTP
Required parameters: (none)
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RFC 2935 IOTP HTTP Supplement September 2000
Optional parameters: charset - see RFC 2376
Encoding considerations: Content is XML and may in some cases
require quoted printable or base64 encoding. However, no encoding
is required for HTTP transport which is expected to be common.
Security considerations: IOTP includes provisions for digital
authentication but for confidentiality, other mechanisms such as
TLS should be used. See RFC 2801 and RFC 2802.
Interoperability considerations: See RFC 2801.
Published specification: See RFC 2801 and RFC 2802.
Applications which use this media type: Internet Open Trading
Protocol applications.
Additional information: (none)
Person & email address to contact for further information:
Name: Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
Email: Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com
Intended usage: COMMON
Author/Change controller: IETF
8. References
[RFC 1945] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and H. Frystyk, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, May 1996.
[RFC 2048] Freed, N., Klensin, J. and J. Postel, "Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration
Procedure", RFC 2048, November 1996.
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC 2246] Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0",
RFC 2246, January 1999.
[RFC 2376] Whitehead, E. and M. Murata, "XML Media Types", RFC 2376,
July 1998.
[RFC 2396] Berners-Lee, T., Rielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396,
August 1998.
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RFC 2935 IOTP HTTP Supplement September 2000
[RFC 2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P. and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
[RFC 2801] Burdett, D., "Internet Open Trading Protocol - IOTP
Version 1.0", RFC 2801, April 2000.
[RFC 2802] Davidson, K. and Y. Kawatsura, "Digital Signatures for the
v1.0 Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP)", RFC 2802,
April 2000
[XML] Bray, T., Paoli, J. and C. Sperberg-McQueen, "Extensible
Markup Language (XML) 1.0" <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>;,
February 1998.
9. Authors' Addresses
Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
Motorola
140 Forest Avenue
Hudson, MA 01749 USA
Phone: +1 978-562-2827(h)
+1 508-261-5434(w)
Fax: +1 508-261-4447(w)
EMail: Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com
Chris J. Smith
Royal Bank of Canada
277 Front Street West
Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A4 CANADA
Phone: +1 416-348-6090
Fax: +1 416-348-2210
EMail: chris.smith@royalbank.com
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RFC 2935 IOTP HTTP Supplement September 2000
10. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
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