Maximum length of HTTP GET request

Question

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

User · Answer

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

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The limit is dependent on both the server and the client used  and if applicable  also the proxy the server or the client is using   Most web servers have a limit of 8192 bytes  8  KB   which is usually configurable somewhere in the server configuration  As to the client side matter  the HTTP 1 1 specification even warns about this  Here s an extract of chapter 3 2 1   Note  Servers ought to be cautious about depending on URI lengths above 255 bytes  because some older client or proxy implementations might not properly support these lengths   The limit in Internet  Explorer and Safari is about 2  KB  in Opera about 4  KB and in Firefox about 8  KB  We may thus assume that 8  KB is the maximum possible length and that 2  KB is a more affordable length to rely on at the server side and that 255 bytes is the safest length to assume that the entire URL will come in  If the limit is exceeded in either the browser or the server  most will just truncate the characters outside the limit without any warning  Some servers however may send an HTTP 414 error  If you need to send large data  then better use POST instead of GET  Its limit is much higher  but more dependent on the server used than the client  Usually up to around 2  GB is allowed by the average web server  This is also configurable somewhere in the server settings  The average server will display a server-specific error exception when the POST limit is exceeded  usually as an HTTP 500 error

User · Answer

Browser limits are     Browser           Address bar    document location                                  or anchor tag --------------------------------------------------- Chrome                32779            gt 64k Android                8192            gt 64k Firefox                 gt 64k            gt 64k Safari                  gt 64k            gt 64k Internet Explorer 11   2047           5120 Edge 16                2047          10240     Want more  See this question on Stack Overflow

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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 nbsp KB - 8 nbsp 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

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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

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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

User · Answer

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

[web-services] Maximum length of HTTP GET request

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