Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
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, "there is a strong, dark, rich requirement for a protocol designed espressoly [sic] for the brewing of coffee" that included a pun on the word "espresso."
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]
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 may be short and stout. Demonstrations of this behaviour exist.[7][8][9]
|
See also
References
