[web-services] Maximum length of HTTP GET request

What's the maximum length of an HTTP GET request?

Is there a response error defined that the server can/should return if it receives a GET request that exceeds this length?

This is in the context of a web service API, although it's interesting to see the browser limits as well.

Technically, I have seen HTTP GET will have issues if the URL length goes beyond 2000 characters. In that case, it's better to use HTTP POST or split the URL.

You are asking two separate questions here:

What's the maximum length of an HTTP GET request?

As already mentioned, HTTP itself doesn't impose any hard-coded limit on request length; but browsers have limits ranging on the 2 KB - 8 KB (255 bytes if we count very old browsers).

Is there a response error defined that the server can/should return if it receives a GET request exceeds this length?

That's the one nobody has answered.

HTTP 1.1 defines status code 414 Request-URI Too Long for the cases where a server-defined limit is reached. You can see further details on RFC 2616.

For the case of client-defined limits, there isn't any sense on the server returning something, because the server won't receive the request at all.

Yes. There isn't any limit on a GET request.

I am able to send ~4000 characters as part of the query string using both the Chrome browser and curl command.

I am using Tomcat 8.x server which has returned the expected 200 OK response.

Here is the screenshot of a Google Chrome HTTP request (hiding the endpoint I tried due to security reasons):

RESPONSE

Browser limits are:

Browser           Address bar    document.location
                                 or anchor tag
---------------------------------------------------
Chrome                32779           >64k
Android                8192           >64k
Firefox                >64k           >64k
Safari                 >64k           >64k
Internet Explorer 11   2047           5120
Edge 16                2047          10240

Want more? See this question on Stack Overflow.

As already mentioned, HTTP itself doesn't impose any hard-coded limit on request length; but browsers have limits ranging on the 2048 character allowed in the GET method.

A similar question is here: Is there a limit to the length of a GET request?

I've hit the limit and on my shared hosting account, but the browser returned a blank page before it got to the server I think.