5.3 Request Header Fields


The request-header fields allow the client to pass additional information about the request, and about the client itself, to the server. These fields act as request modifiers, with semantics equivalent to the parameters on a programming language method invocation.
       request-header = Accept                   ; Section 14.1
                      | Accept-Charset           ; Section 14.2
                      | Accept-Encoding          ; Section 14.3
                      | Accept-Language          ; Section 14.4
                      | Authorization            ; Section 14.8
                      | Expect                   ; Section 14.20
                      | From                     ; Section 14.22
                      | Host                     ; Section 14.23
                      | If-Match                 ; Section 14.24
                      | If-Modified-Since        ; Section 14.25
                      | If-None-Match            ; Section 14.26
                      | If-Range                 ; Section 14.27
                      | If-Unmodified-Since      ; Section 14.28
                      | Max-Forwards             ; Section 14.31
                      | Proxy-Authorization      ; Section 14.34
                      | Range                    ; Section 14.35
                      | Referer                  ; Section 14.36
                      | TE                       ; Section 14.39
                      | User-Agent               ; Section 14.43


Request-header field names can be extended reliably only in combination with a change in the protocol version. However, new or experimental header fields MAY be given the semantics of request- header fields if all parties in the communication recognize them to be request-header fields. Unrecognized header fields are treated as entity-header fields.