TE

The TE header field is a request header that lists which transfer codings, besides chunked, the client is willing to accept in response, and whether or not the client is willing to accept trailer fields in a chunked transfer coding.

Writing requests (clients)

List all the transfer codings the client is capable of reading, except for chunked (which is required to be supported in HTTP/1.1). Additionally, if the client supports trailers in the chunked encoding, add trailers. This header will typically always be the same.

Since TE is a hop-by-hop header, clients must list it in the Connection header.

Reading requests (servers)

Servers should select the highest-ranked, earliest-listed transfer coding that is worth encoding, or else no coding if there are no matches. A "chunked" coding should be applied on top of the selected encoding, if any.

TE is only meaningful in HTTP/1.1 requests. Ignore the header in other versions.

The Transfer-Encoding is hop-by hop and not used for caching, therefore it is not listed in Vary.

Overview table

Name

TE

Description

Lists transfer codings supported by the user-agent.

Direction

Request

Negotiates

Transfer-Encoding

Specification

RFC 7230: HTTP/1.1 Message Syntax and Routing §4.3. TE

Syntax

TE        = #t-codings
t-codings = "trailers" / ( transfer-coding [ t-ranking ] )
t-ranking = OWS ";" OWS "q=" rank
rank      = ( "0" [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] )
           / ( "1" [ "." 0*3("0") ] )

Example

A client that supports the "deflate" transfer coding, and the "chunked" transfer coding (without trailers):

TE: deflate

A client that only supports the "chunked" transfer coding (without trailers):

TE:

A client that supports the "chunked" transfer coding (including trailers), and supports "deflate" with a reduced preference:

TE: trailers, deflate;q=0.5