Why is the "Keep-Alive" header an integer?

[tdutreui-solocal]

Hi,
I observe that this gem generates the following headers in my Rspec VCR cassettes :

      Connection:
      - keep-alive
      Keep-Alive:
      - '30'

On the other hand, I see in the MDN docs that Keep-Alive should be a key/value string.
Could you explain me why?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Keep-Alive

[iMacTia]

Hi @tdutreui-solocal we don't set this header in this gem, it gets set somewhere down in the dependencies by either net-http-persistent or net-http.
You can see in net-http-persistent documentation that 30 is the default value: https://github.com/drbrain/net-http-persistent/blob/c1fb1a5ca29c4c2a7102138af22529cc78adb06e/lib/net/http/persistent.rb#L316-L325.

Although I agree with you that the default value should conform to the RFC (assuming the RFC enforces the key/value structure, the MDN docs are not official specifications), but that goes beyond the scope of this gem, so my suggestion is to open an issue against net-http-persistent instead.

[tdutreui-solocal]

Indeed there is already one drbrain/net-http-persistent#136

[iMacTia]

Thank you for sharing the link!