HTTP status on .well-known/webfinger etc

[jernst]

0.2.101

• If invoked with no resource parameter at all, the response is 200 with content type HTML, and a plain-text error message. Example: curl http://host/.well-known/webfinger

This is very confusing. I don't know what the webfinger spec says, but I would suggest either 404, or 400.

Secondly: An error message is fine, but HTML?

Compare:

• If invoked with a non-existing resource, the response is 404. Example: curl -v http://host/.well-known/webfinger?resource=does-not-exist

Also: The self-check here checks for 200 on the URL without any resource argument. This seems not such a good plan because:

• the request you are testing is not used for anything useful, so whether or not it works is not relevant;
• you don't test whether a valid JSON file actually comes back for an existing account;
• and that's particularly important because your instructions use .htaccess hacking to redirect the original request to a PHP script with an extra URL argument -- lots can go wrong when this is mapped, in particular because the ?resource in the original request now needs to be a &resource as it is appended to some other argument.