This specification defines a standard for representing and propagating a set of application-defined properties associated with a distributed request or workflow execution.
This is independent of the Trace Context specification. Baggage can be used regardless of whether Distributed Tracing is used. This specification standardizes representation and propagation of application-defined properties. In contrast, Trace Context specification standardizes representation and propagation of the metadata needed to enable Distributed Tracing scenarios.
The current version of the Baggage specification is targeted for implementations by applications and services, including web applications running within a browser. Web Browsers or User Agents are not currently in scope as a target implementation.
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Recommendation any earlier than 30 August 2024.
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As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.
The key words MAY, MUST, MUST NOT, and SHOULD in this document
are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14
[RFC2119] [RFC8174]
when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
2. Overview
The baggage header represents a set of user-defined properties associated with a distributed request. Libraries and platforms SHOULD propagate this header.
3. Baggage HTTP Header Format
The baggage header is used to propagate user-supplied key-value pairs through a distributed request.
A received header MAY be altered to change or add information and it SHOULD be passed on to all downstream requests.
Multiple baggage headers are allowed. Values can be combined in a single header according to RFC 7230.
3.1 Header Name
Header name: baggage
In order to increase interoperability across multiple protocols and encourage successful integration,
implementations SHOULD keep the header name lowercase.
3.2 Header Encoding
This header is a [UTF-8] encoded [UNICODE] string, however it uses only code points from the Basic Latin Unicode Block which are encoded identically in both Unicode and [ASCII].
3.3 Header Content
This section uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation of [RFC5234].
3.3.1 Definition
baggage-string = list-member 0*179( OWS "," OWS list-member )
list-member = key OWS "=" OWS value *( OWS ";" OWS property )
property = key OWS "=" OWS value
property =/ key OWS
key = token ; as defined in RFC 7230, Section 3.2.6value = *baggage-octet
baggage-octet = %x21 / %x23-2B / %x2D-3A / %x3C-5B / %x5D-7E; US-ASCII characters excluding CTLs,; whitespace, DQUOTE, comma, semicolon,; and backslashOWS = *( SP / HTAB ) ; optional white space, as defined in RFC 7230, Section 3.2.3
List of list-members with optional properties attached.
Uniqueness of keys between multiple list-members in a baggage-string is not guaranteed.
The order of duplicate entries SHOULD be preserved when mutating the list.
Producers SHOULD try to produce a baggage-string without any list-members which duplicate the key of another list member.
3.3.1.2 key
A token which identifies a value in the baggage. token is defined in RFC7230, Section 3.2.6.
Leading and trailing whitespaces (OWS) are allowed and are not considered to be a part of the key.
Note
3.3.1.3 value
A string which contains a value identified by the key.
Any code points outside of the baggage-octet range MUST be percent-encoded.
The percent code point (U+0025) MUST be percent-encoded.
Code points which are not required to be percent-encoded MAY be percent-encoded.
Percent-encoding is defined in [RFC3986], Section 2.1: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-2.1.
When decoding the value, percent-encoded octet sequences that do not match the UTF-8 encoding scheme MUST be replaced with the replacement code point (U+FFFD).
Leading and trailing whitespaces (OWS) are allowed and are not considered to be a part of the value.
Note, valueMAY contain any number of the equal sign (U+003D) code points. Parsers
MUST NOT assume that the equal sign is only used to separate key and value.
Note
3.3.1.4 property
Additional metadata MAY be appended to values in the form of property set, represented as semi-colon ; delimited list of keys and/or key-value pairs, e.g. ;k1=v1;k2;k3=v3.
Property keys and values are given no specific meaning by this specification.
Leading and trailing OWS is allowed and is not considered to be a part of the property key or value.
3.3.2 Limits
A platform MUST propagate all list-members including any list-members added by the platform whenever both of these conditions are met:
Condition 1: The resulting baggage-string contains 64 list-members or less.
Condition 2: The resulting baggage-string is of size 8192 bytes or less.
If either of the above conditions is not met, a platform MAY drop list-members until both conditions are met.
The selection of which list-members to drop and their order is unspecified and left to the implementer.
Note that the above limits are minimum requirements to comply with the specification.
An implementor or platform MAY define higher limits and SHOULD propagate as much baggage information as is reasonable within their requirements.
If a platform cannot propagate all baggage, it MUST NOT propagate any partial list-members.
If there are multiple baggage headers, all limits apply to the combination of all baggage headers and not each header individually.
3.3.3 Example
The following example header contains 3 list-members.
The baggage-string contained in the header contains 86 bytes.
82 bytes come from the list-members and 4 bytes come from commas and optional whitespace.
Here is one more example where values with characters outside of the baggage-octet range are percent-encoded. Consider the entry: userId="Amélie", serverNode="DF 28", isProduction=false:
For example, if all of your data needs to be sent to a single node, you could propagate a property indicating that.
baggage: serverNode=DF%2028
For example, if you need to annotate logs with some request-specific information, you could propagate a property using the baggage header.
baggage: userId=alice
For example, if you have non-production requests that flow through the same services as production requests.
baggage: isProduction=false
3.5 Mutating baggage
A system receiving a baggage request header SHOULD send it to outgoing requests.
A system MAY mutate the value of this header before passing it on.
Because baggage entry keys, values, and metadata are not specified here, producers and consumers MAY agree on any set of mutation rules that don't violate the specification. For example, keys may be deduplicated by keeping the first entry, keeping the last entry, or concatenating values together.
The following mutations are allowed:
Add a new key/value pair. A key/value pair MAY be added.
Update an existing value. The value for any given key MAY be updated.
Delete a key/value pair. Any key/value pair MAY be deleted.
Deduplicating the list. Duplicate keys MAY be removed.
If a system receiving or updating a baggage request header determines that the number of baggage entries exceeds the limit defined in the limits section above, it MAY drop or truncate certain baggage entries in any order chosen by the implementation.
If a system determines that the value of a baggage entry is not in the format defined in this specification, it MAY remove that entry before propagating the baggage header as part of outgoing requests.
4. Security Considerations
Systems relying on the baggage headers should also follow all best practices for parsing potentially malicious data, including checking for header length and content of header values.
These practices help to avoid buffer overflow, HTML injection, and other types of attacks.
4.1 Information Exposure
As mentioned in the privacy section, baggage may carry sensitive information.
Application owners should either ensure that no proprietary or confidential information is stored in baggage, or they should ensure that baggage isn't present in requests that cross trust-boundaries.
4.2 Other Risks
Application owners need to make sure to test all code paths leading to the sending of the baggage header. For example, in web applications written in JavaScript, it is typical to make cross-origin requests. If one of these code paths leads to baggage headers being sent by cross-origin calls that are restricted using Access-Control-Allow-Headers [FETCH], it may fail.
5. Privacy Considerations
Requirements to propagate headers to downstream services, as well as storing values of these headers, open up potential privacy concerns.
Using proprietary ways of context propagation, vendors and application developers could always encode information that contains user identifiable data.
This standard makes it possible for systems to operate on a known, standardized header to restrict propagation of sensitive data in the baggage when crossing trust boundaries.
Systems MUST assess the risk of header abuse. This section provides some considerations and initial assessment of the risk associated with storing and propagating this header. Systems may choose to inspect and remove sensitive information from the fields before processing or propagating the received data. All mutations should, however, conform to the list of mutations defined in this specification.
5.1 Privacy of the baggage header
The main purpose of this header is to provide additional system-specific information to other systems within the same trust-boundary.
The baggage header may contain any value in any of the keys.
As such, the baggage header can contain user-identifiable data, however no key or its value or properties is given semantic meaning by this specification.
Applications using baggage should be aware that the keys and values can be propagated to other systems. Hence, they should remove any private information that they don't want to be propagated to other systems.
A. Acknowledgments
Thanks to Armin Ruech, Jonathan Mace, Philippe Le Hegaret, Bastian Krol, and Reiley Yang for their contributions to this work.