Question

I guess I have to set some context before I explain the problem I have.

For my iOS app, I am writing my own HTTPClient using NSOperationQueue and executing each operation wrapping NSURLRequest and NSURLConnection on main run loop with NSRunLoopCommonModes so it won’t block the UI.

I noticed that the web services which didn’t require authentication were working fine and returning data but the web services which needed authentication returned status code 503 – Service Unavailable error.

Before I call any of the web services, I am completing the authentication process by handling multiple URL redirects using a web view and finally upon getting success, I am setting a cookie. So this cookie should be sent automatically for the web services which require authentication and the web services which require authentication should work ideally. This was the case with my previous HTTPClient without NSOperationQueue. I didn’t pass the cookie explicitly.

I did lot of debugging and finally figured that the problem was not that complex but stupid. The actual problem was while sending the HTTP method name for my URLRequest I was passing the method name in pascal case instead of upper case.

So if I have, [myURLRequest setHTTPMethod:@”Get”] the web services requiring authentication do not work but after changing the method name to upper case letters like [myURLRequest setHTTPMethod:@”GET”] it started working.

So it turned out that it was not the problem with authentication but web method name.

I am wondering about two things:
1) Is that a rule that the web method name should always be in upper case letters? Or this is specific to the iOS? Notice here that the web services which didn’t require authentication were working fine with web method name not having in upper case letters too.

2) The authentication cookie being set on successful authentication is never sent out explicitly along with any NSURLRequest. So how does iOS send it along with the URL request automatically?

Answer 1

From the specification:

The Method token indicates the method to be performed on the resource identified by the Request-URI. The method is case-sensitive.

It then goes on to list a number of method names, all of which are entirely in upper case.