Can HTTP headers be localized?

Question

The HTTP Accept header can specify priority using the q specifier, such as

application/xml;q=0.8

I had a look in the RFC but could see any mention of whether the q specifier is subject to localization or not. For instance, could a European browser send the figure as q=0,8 instead if the Accept-Language was set accordingly?

If not, there must be some documentation somewhere that specifies that HTTP uses the period notation and is culture invariant in its headers I guess?

Andy · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-18 15:00:00Z

3

Section 3.9 of RFC-2616 (the HTTP/1.1 spec) defines a Quality Value (the value assigned to 'q' in your example) as:

qvalue         = ( "0" [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] )
               | ( "1" [ "." 0*3("0") ] )

so all HTTP applications must use a decimal point, not a comma or anything else, regardless of where in the world they reside.

edited Jan 18, 2012 at 15:00

answered Jan 18, 2012 at 14:51

Andy

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1 Comment

Martin Over a year ago

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for and failed to find :)

Chronial · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-18 14:52:50Z

1

A technical protocol is always culture-independent - it's technical, not American or anything. Of course you can not localize anything in a HTTP header. You can also not localize the header fields by translating them to the language that it is used in the country the browser is run or written in.

answered Jan 18, 2012 at 14:52

Chronial

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2 Comments

Jukka K. Korpela Over a year ago

Technical protocols are usually “culture-independent,” which means in practice that they are based on US English, to the extent that they use expressions resembling a human language. There is however no guarantee that every protocol always follows this principle. Ultimately, such things are defined in each protocol specification.

Chronial Over a year ago

This is of course correct, but I think if you are asking these questions about the HTTP protocol, you are following the wrong line of thought ;).

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