6 Request

6 Request

A request message from a client to a server or vice versa includes, within the first line of that message, the method to be applied to the resource, the identifier of the resource, and the protocol version in use.

Request = Request-Line ; Section 6.1 *( general-header ; Section 5 | request-header ; Section 6.2 | entity-header ) ; Section 8.1 CRLF [ message-body ] ; Section 4.3

6.1 Request Line

Request-Line = Method SP Request-URI SP RTSP-Version CRLF

Method = "DESCRIBE" ; Section 10.2 | "ANNOUNCE" ; Section 10.3 | "GET_PARAMETER" ; Section 10.8 | "OPTIONS" ; Section 10.1 | "PAUSE" ; Section 10.6 | "PLAY" ; Section 10.5 | "RECORD" ; Section 10.11 | "REDIRECT" ; Section 10.10 | "SETUP" ; Section 10.4 | "SET_PARAMETER" ; Section 10.9 | "TEARDOWN" ; Section 10.7 | extension-method

extension-method = token

Request-URI = "*" | absolute_URI

RTSP-Version = "RTSP" "/" 1DIGIT "." 1DIGIT

6.2 Request Header Fields

request-header = Accept ; Section 12.1 | Accept-Encoding ; Section 12.2 | Accept-Language ; Section 12.3 | Authorization ; Section 12.5 | From ; Section 12.20 | If-Modified-Since ; Section 12.23 | Range ; Section 12.29 | Referer ; Section 12.30 | User-Agent ; Section 12.41

Note that in contrast to HTTP/1.1 [2], RTSP requests always contain the absolute URL (that is, including the scheme, host and port) rather than just the absolute path.

HTTP/1.1 requires servers to understand the absolute URL, but clients are supposed to use the Host request header. This is purely needed for backward-compatibility with HTTP/1.0 servers, a consideration that does not apply to RTSP.

The asterisk "*" in the Request-URI means that the request does not apply to a particular resource, but to the server itself, and is only allowed when the method used does not necessarily apply to a resource. One example would be:

OPTIONS * RTSP/1.0