[tor-bugs] #21952 [Applications/Tor Browser]: Onion-location: increasing the use of onion services through automatic redirects and aliasing

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#21952: Onion-location: increasing the use of onion services through automatic
redirects and aliasing
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  linda                                |          Owner:  acat
     Type:  project                              |         Status:
                                                 |  needs_review
 Priority:  Medium                               |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser             |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  ux-team, tor-hs, network-team-       |  Actual Points:  11.6
  roadmap-november, tbb-9.5, network-team-       |
  roadmap-2020Q1, TorBrowserTeam202003R          |
Parent ID:  #30024                               |         Points:  6
 Reviewer:  pospeselr, mcs, brade                |        Sponsor:
                                                 |  Sponsor27-must
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Comment (by sysrqb):

 acat and I briefly discussed the header format earlier. One piece of
 feedback reminded me that we should use X-Onion-Location, because we are
 not implementing a standardized HTTP header. However, acat pointed me to
 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6648 where `X-*` headers are considered
 deprecated. So, we should think a little harder about the format of the
 value for this field. The `Location` HTTP header is
 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#page-68 defined] as:
 {{{

    The "Location" header field is used in some responses to refer to a
    specific resource in relation to the response.  The type of
    relationship is defined by the combination of request method and
    status code semantics.

      Location = URI-reference

    The field value consists of a single URI-reference.  When it has the
    form of a relative reference ([RFC3986], Section 4.2), the final
    value is computed by resolving it against the effective request URI
    ([RFC3986], Section 5).

    For 201 (Created) responses, the Location value refers to the primary
    resource created by the request.  For 3xx (Redirection) responses,
    the Location value refers to the preferred target resource for
    automatically redirecting the request.

    If the Location value provided in a 3xx (Redirection) response does
    not have a fragment component, a user agent MUST process the
    redirection as if the value inherits the fragment component of the
    URI reference used to generate the request target (i.e., the
    redirection inherits the original reference's fragment, if any).

    For example, a GET request generated for the URI reference
    "http://www.example.org/~tim" might result in a 303 (See Other)
    response containing the header field:

      Location: /People.html#tim

    which suggests that the user agent redirect to
    "http://www.example.org/People.html#tim"

    Likewise, a GET request generated for the URI reference
    "http://www.example.org/index.html#larry" might result in a 301
    (Moved Permanently) response containing the header field:

      Location: http://www.example.net/index.html

    which suggests that the user agent redirect to
    "http://www.example.net/index.html#larry", preserving the original
    fragment identifier.
 }}}

 In the future, we may find it advantageous if we specify `Onion-Location`
 as a [https://httpwg.org/http-extensions/draft-ietf-httpbis-header-
 structure.html structured header] with a backwards compatible format
 matching that of the Location header.

 To be clear, we can use the current implementation and get this into
 Nightly builds, but we should think about this idea before the feature
 moves to Stable.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21952#comment:134>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online