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add HTTP spec #508

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bc1aa59
add HTTP spec
marten-seemann Jan 22, 2023
1f075f6
2nd attempt for server auth
marten-seemann Jan 29, 2023
12f86b8
require client to authenticate the server when doing client auth
marten-seemann Jan 29, 2023
146c09a
better motivation for libp2p+HTTP (#515)
marten-seemann Feb 14, 2023
5398f5d
fix a few typos
marten-seemann Feb 14, 2023
b6c1bc2
http: use .well-known/libp2p.json for configuration
marten-seemann Mar 2, 2023
8a57943
http: nest libp2p.json config to allow for future configuration
marten-seemann Mar 2, 2023
d506145
Merge pull request #529 from libp2p/http-well-known-configuration
MarcoPolo Jun 1, 2023
946f516
Reformat the spec from the Point of View of an implementer
MarcoPolo Jul 7, 2023
3681472
Add link
MarcoPolo Jul 7, 2023
dd5d07c
Merge comments
MarcoPolo Jul 10, 2023
46d1857
Merge pull request #556 from libp2p/marco/http-update
MarcoPolo Jul 10, 2023
ebe612c
Add note about how this is just one possible auth mechanism
MarcoPolo Jul 10, 2023
7e5a077
Add lidel to interest group
MarcoPolo Jul 14, 2023
db2b3b5
Update http/README.md
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
6319458
Formatting
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
c7c9c43
Add thomas
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
454e25c
Use metadata map and call it protocols
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
a25267b
Add mermaid diagrom for HTTP semantics vs transport
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
3014b22
Grammar fixes
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
f96359b
Lidel suggestions
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
1e87960
Define where the libp2p-token will be
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
d0f0d93
Grammar fix
MarcoPolo Jul 17, 2023
8fbd64a
Specify IX vs NX in auth scheme
MarcoPolo Jul 19, 2023
71415b0
Add SNI and HTTP_libp2p_token to Noise extensions
MarcoPolo Jul 19, 2023
4a03bb0
Reword Namespace section a bit
MarcoPolo Aug 2, 2023
877899d
Remove SNI and token from extensions
MarcoPolo Aug 2, 2023
dc71f2c
Define the multiaddr URI
MarcoPolo Aug 24, 2023
d8850aa
update protocol name for IPFS gateway
marten-seemann Oct 4, 2023
78e8ca1
Be clear about no pipelining
MarcoPolo Mar 14, 2024
d30efda
Use SHOULD instead of MUST
MarcoPolo Mar 18, 2024
8628b5a
Update RFC for connection: close
MarcoPolo Apr 3, 2024
3c0ac40
Rename well-known
MarcoPolo Apr 3, 2024
75bc635
Add sentence on why POST and other mappings
MarcoPolo Apr 3, 2024
f95e4db
Sukun's review comments
MarcoPolo Apr 15, 2024
e3eb9dc
Small typo fixes
MarcoPolo Apr 15, 2024
95ffe6d
Update to http-path
MarcoPolo Jun 3, 2024
8f44d00
Merge pull request #568 from libp2p/marco/multiaddr-scheme
MarcoPolo Jun 5, 2024
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153 changes: 153 additions & 0 deletions http/README.md
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# HTTP

| Lifecycle Stage | Maturity | Status | Latest Revision |
| --------------- | ------------- | ------ | --------------- |
| 1A | Working Draft | Active | r0, 2023-01-23 |

Authors: [@marten-seemann], [@MarcoPolo]

Interest Group: [@lidel], [@thomaseizinger]

[@marten-seemann]: https://github.com/marten-seemann
[@MarcoPolo]: https://github.com/MarcoPolo
[@lidel]: https://github.com/lidel
[@thomaseizinger]: https://github.com/thomaseizinger

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## Introduction

This document defines how libp2p nodes can offer and use an HTTP transport alongside their other transports to support application protocols with HTTP semantics. This allows a wider variety of nodes to participate in the libp2p network, for example:
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- Browsers communicating with other libp2p nodes without needing a WebSocket, WebTransport, or WebRTC connection.
- HTTP only edge workers can run application protocols and respond to peers on the network.
- `curl` from the command line can make requests to other libp2p nodes.

The HTTP transport will also allow application protocols to make use of HTTP intermediaries such as HTTP caching, and layer 7 proxying and load balancing. This is all in addition to the existing features that libp2p provides such as:
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- Connectivity – Work on top of WebRTC, WebTransport, QUIC, TCP, or an HTTP transport.
- Hole punching – Work with peers behind NATs.
- Peer ID Authentication – Authenticate your peer by their libp2p peer id.
- Peer discovery – Learn about a peer given their peer id.

## HTTP Semantics vs Encodings vs Transport

HTTP is a bit of an overloaded term. This section aims to clarify what we’re talking about when we say “HTTP”.


```mermaid
graph TB
subgraph "HTTP Semantics"
HTTP
end
subgraph "Encoding"
HTTP1.1[HTTP/1.1]
HTTP2[HTTP/2]
HTTP3[HTTP/3]
end
subgraph "Transports"
Libp2p[libp2p streams]
HTTPTransport[HTTP transport]
end
HTTP --- HTTP1.1
HTTP --- HTTP1.1
HTTP1.1 --- Libp2p
HTTP --- HTTP2
HTTP --- HTTP3
HTTP1.1 --- HTTPTransport
HTTP2 --- HTTPTransport
HTTP3 --- HTTPTransport
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h2c to show how it can be multiplexed and negociated in many ways (header compression, binary based protocol, ...) ?
Feel free to ignore this comment if you think it's making the graph too complex.

```

- *HTTP semantics* ([RFC 9110](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html)) is
the stateless application-level protocol that you work with when writing HTTP
apis (for example).

- *HTTP encoding* is the thing that takes your high level request/response
defined in terms of HTTP semantics and encodes it into a form that can be sent
over the wire.

- *HTTP transport* is the thing that takes your encoded reqeust/response and
sends it over the wire. For HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, this is a TCP+TLS connection.
For HTTP/3, this is a QUIC connection.

When this document says *HTTP* it is generally referring to *HTTP semantics*.

## Interoperability with existing HTTP systems

A goal of this spec is to allow libp2p to be able to interoperate with existing HTTP servers and clients. Care is taken in this document to not introduce anything that would break interoperability with existing systems.
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So this is a bit confusing to me. Above you are saying the you generally refer to HTTP semantics and the next sentence says that a goal is to interoperate with existing HTTP servers and clients which refers to the transport, correct?

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Refers to both actually


## HTTP Transport

Nodes MUST use HTTPS (i.e., they MUST NOT use plaintext HTTP). It is RECOMMENDED to use HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.

Nodes signal support for their HTTP transport using the `/http` component in
their multiaddr. E.g., `/dns4/example.com/tls/http`. See the [HTTP multiaddr
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component spec](https://github.com/libp2p/specs/pull/550) for more details.

## Namespace

libp2p does not squat the global namespace. libp2p application protocols can be discovered by the [well-known resource](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615) `.well-known/libp2p`. This allows server operators to dynamically change the URLs of the application protocols offered, and not hard-code any assumptions how a certain resource is meant to be interpreted.

```json

{
"protocols": {
"/kad/1.0.0": {"path": "/kademlia/"},
"/ipfs-http/1.0.0": {"path": "/"},
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}
}
```

The resource contains a mapping of application protocols to their respective URL. For example, this configuration file would tell a client

1. That the Kademlia protocol is available at `/kademlia` and
2. The [IPFS Trustless Gateway API](https://specs.ipfs.tech/http-gateways/trustless-gateway/) is mounted at `/`.
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If I understand correctly, this only specifies the path but not the method (GET / POST) to use when accessing this protocol over HTTP and that's up to the specific protocol to define how to run it over HTTP?
If so, should we add this explainer in the spec?

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Hm.. the methods will be specific to each protocol at each mount point, so not part of this spec?

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That makes sense. As I see it there are two sections in this document:

  1. Running libp2p protocols over standard http like h2 or h3
  2. Running http protocols over libp2p streams.

So should we mention it in the specs that a libp2p protocol supporting http transport should specify the http method and headers to be used for the protocol. For the path they can expose it via the wellknown endpoint /.well-known/libp2p/protocols

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I'm not sure I understand. An application protocol would be built using HTTP semantics, and that protocol would then be able to run on libp2p streams or "standard" http transports like h2, h3.

What do you mean by:

Running libp2p protocols over standard http like h2 or h3

This spec does not define how you would take an existing libp2p protocol and map it to HTTP semantics. That is best done by the specific protocol itself. But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point?


It is valid to expose a service at `/`. It is RECOMMENDED that implementations facilitate the coexistence of different service endpoints by ensuring that more specific URLs are resolved before less specific ones. For example, when registering handlers, more specific paths like `/kademlia/foo` should take precedence over less specific handler, such as `/`.

## Peer ID Authentication

When using the HTTP Transport, peer id authentication is optional. You only pay for it if you need it. This benefits use cases that don’t need peer authentication (e.g., fetching content addressed data) or authenticate some other way (not tied to libp2p peer ids).

Peer ID authentication in the HTTP Transport follows a similar to pattern to how
libp2p adds Peer ID authentication in WebTransport and WebRTC. We run the
standard libp2p Noise handshake, but using `IX` for client and server
authentication or `NX` for just server authentication.

Note: This is just one form of Peer ID authentication. Other forms may be added
in the future (with a different `WWW-Authenticate` value) or be added to the
application protocols themselves.

### Authentication flow

1. The client initiates a request that it knows must be authenticated OR the client responds to a `401` with the header `WWW-Authenticate: Libp2p-Noise` (The server MAY also include `Libp2p-Token` as an authentication scheme).
2. The client sets the `Authorization` [header](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html#section-11.6.2) to `Libp2p-Noise <multibase-encoded-noise-protobuf>` . This initiates the `IX` or `NX` handshake.
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We might run into the HTTP header size limit here (e.g. for HTTP/3: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9114#section-4.2.2), especially when using PQ keys.

Would it make sense to use a separate HTTP endpoint here, and do the handshake using the body of a request / response to that endpoint?

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How big are pq keys? It's pretty nice and ergonomic to do auth in the headers because then standard stuff like this works:

func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    // This handler requires libp2p auth
    clientID, err := AuthenticateClient(serverKey, w.Header(), r.Header)
    
    if err != nil || clientID == "" {
	w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", "Libp2p-Noise-IX")
	w.WriteHeader(http.StatusUnauthorized)
	return
    }
    
    w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
    w.Write([]byte(fmt.Sprintf("Hello, %s", clientID)))
}

Or even middlewares:

libp2pAuthMiddleware(http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
	w.Write([]byte(fmt.Sprintf("Hello, %s", r.Context().Value(libp2pAuthKey))))
}))

A survey shows that many support at least 8KB in headers.

We could only support the libp2p-token in the auth header, and do the the noise handshake on a dedicated endpoint. That would mean we wouldn't be able to piggyback on a request to do auth. It would also mean that doing something with client auth is always a 2 step process. It also adds a bit of complexity I think since there are two flows for auth, instead of everything happening in the headers.

If we can stay below the 8KB limit, which may be possible I think sticking with the headers for everything would be nicer.

1. The protobuf is multibase encoded, but clients MUST only use encodings that are HTTP header safe (refer to to the [token68 definition](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html#section-11.2)). To set the minimum bar for interoperability, clients and servers MUST support base32 encoding (”b” in the multibase table).
2. When the server receives this request and `IX` was used, it can authenticate the client.
3. The server responds with `Authentication-Info` field set to `Libp2p-Noise <multibase-encoding-noise-protobuf-response>`.
1. The server MUST include the SNI used for the connection in the [Noise extensions](https://github.com/libp2p/specs/blob/master/noise/README.md#noise-extensions).
2. The server MAY include a token in the Noise extensions that the client
can use to avoid doing another Noise handshake in the future. The client
would use this token by setting the `Authorization` header to `Libp2p-Token
<token>`.
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Don't we have to define the code point of this token? I am not too familiar with the design intentions around our noise extension registry but from an implementer PoV, I wouldn't know at the moment, how to extract this token.

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Yep, I just pushed the relevant changes to the noise spec. It adds two new optional pb fields

3. When the client receives this response, it can authenticate the server’s peer ID.
4. The client verifies the SNI in the Noise extension matches the one used to initiate the connection. The client MUST close the connection if they differ.
1. The client SHOULD remember this connection is authenticated.
2. The client SHOULD use the `Libp2p-Token` if provided for future authorized requests.

This costs one round trip, but can piggy back on an appropriate request.

### Authentication Endpoint

Because the client needs to make a request to authenticate the server, and the client may not want to make the real request before authenticating the server, the server MAY provide an authentication endpoint. This authentication endpoint is like any other application protocol, and it shows up in `.well-known/libp2p`, but it only does the authentication flow. It doesn’t send any other data besides what is defined in the above Authentication flow. The protocol id for the authentication endpoint is `/http-noise-auth/1.0.0`.

## Using HTTP semantics over stream transports
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Application protocols using HTTP semantics can run over any libp2p stream transport. Clients open a new stream using `/http/1.1` as the protocol identifer. Clients encode their HTTP request as an HTTP/1.1 message and send it over the stream. Clients parse the response as an HTTP/1.1 message and then close the stream.
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HTTP/1.1 is chosen as the minimum bar for interoperability, but other encodings of HTTP semantics are possible as well and may be specified in a future update.
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## Using other request-response semantics (not HTTP)

This document has focused on using HTTP semantics, but HTTP may not be the common divisor amongst all transports (current and future). It may be desirable to use some other request-response semantics for your application-level protocol, perhaps something like rust-libp2p’s [request-response](https://docs.rs/libp2p/0.52.1/libp2p/request_response/index.html) abstraction. Nothing specified in this document prohibits mapping other semantics onto HTTP semantics to keep the benefits of using an HTTP transport.

To support the simple request-response semantics, for example, the request MUST be encoded within a `POST` request to the proper URL (as defined in the Namespace section). The response is read from the body of the HTTP response. The client MUST authenticate the server and itself **before** making the request.
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