Honor a caller-supplied Transfer-Encoding once request bodies can stream

[shreemaan-abhishek]

Split out of the #16 review. Part of the lua-resty-http parity effort (#18).

Today

Transfer-Encoding is a reserved request header on both sides of the FFI boundary (forbidden_header() in lib/resty/ngx_http_ffi_client.lua, ngx_http_ffi_client_header_is_reserved() in src/ngx_http_ffi_client_request.c). A caller that sets it has it dropped, silently, and the request goes out framed with Content-Length.

Dropping it is correct for now. This client always frames the request body with a Content-Length, so emitting a caller Transfer-Encoding next to it would put both on the wire, which is the request-smuggling shape. The silence is the part worth fixing first.

What lua-resty-http does

Transfer-Encoding is load-bearing there, and it is how a caller asks for a streamed request body:

• transfer_encoding_is_chunked(headers) (resty/http.lua:793) decides the framing.
• When chunked, Content-Length is dropped, citing RFC 7230 3.3.3 (:796-799) - the inverse of what this module does.
• A body that is a function is then written chunk by chunk by _send_body. Without a chunked encoding or an explicit length, that same function body is rejected with Request body is a function but a length or chunked encoding is not specified (:806-807).

So the header alone is meaningless in isolation: it exists to select a request-body framing this module cannot produce yet.

Why it is blocked

There is no streamed request body here. send_request takes rp->body as one ngx_str_t and build_request emits it behind a computed Content-Length. A function or iterator body is the request-side reader deferred in #12, and its absence is already why t/010-stream-conformance.t skips lua-resty-http's TEST 6 / 7 / 8 / 10.

Acceptance

Two steps, in order. The first stands on its own and does not wait for #12.

1. Reject instead of dropping. A caller-supplied Transfer-Encoding returns nil, "<reason>" rather than being discarded, so a request never quietly differs from what was asked for. Same treatment on the C side, which validates independently of Lua.
2. Honor it once a streamed request body exists (needs Incremental/streaming response API: two-phase reader (request → status/headers, then body) with zero-copy read + prefetch_body #12). Transfer-Encoding: chunked selects chunked request framing, Content-Length is dropped rather than sent alongside it, and a function body without either is refused the way lua-resty-http refuses it. Any combination that would emit both Content-Length and Transfer-Encoding stays refused.

Test::Nginx cases for the rejection, and for chunked request framing once step 2 lands. Green on both parser backends.

Related

Host, Connection and Content-Length are reserved by the same two functions and break parity in their own ways. They are tracked separately since each needs a different answer; this issue covers Transfer-Encoding only.