Maximum size of POST data?

[brian.lukoff@gmail.com]

What is the maximum size of POST data? A page on the ASP FAQ web site
(http://classicasp.aspfaq.com/forms/w...arameters.html)
is confusing me:

"While GET is limited to as low as 1024 characters, POST data is
limited to 2 MB on IIS 4.0, and 128 KB on IIS 5.0. Each name/value is
limited to 1024 characters, as imposed by the SGML spec."

Does this last sentence mean that no form field can submit more than
1024 (or 1024 minus the length of the form field name) characters
through POST?

Brian

[Dave Anderson]

Re: Maximum size of POST data?

brian.lukoff@gm ail.com wrote:

"While GET is limited to as low as 1024 characters, POST data is
limited to 2 MB on IIS 4.0, and 128 KB on IIS 5.0. Each name/value is
limited to 1024 characters, as imposed by the SGML spec."
>
Does this last sentence mean that no form field can submit more than
1024 (or 1024 minus the length of the form field name) characters
through POST?

I think the article is worded incorrectly. It even refers to an MSDN article
that directly rebuts it:

Details of the Request Structure
The data limited by MaxClientReques tBuffer (the response line
and headers), consists of all data from the first byte of the
request through the last byte before the entity body. This
includes the method, the URL, any additional path information,
the query string, the HTTP version, all the headers, and the
characters that delimit all parts of the request. In other
words, this includes all data that is not part of the
request's entity body.

Use POST Instead of GET to Send Large Amounts of Data in Request
GET requests use the URL portion of the request line to send
information to IIS. The POST method, however, sends the
information in the request's entity body instead. Therefore,
you should consider using the POST method to send a large
amount of data in the request.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/260694

--
Dave Anderson

Unsolicited commercial email will be read at a cost of $500 per message. Use
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[Tim Slattery]

Re: Maximum size of POST data?

brian.lukoff@gm ail.com wrote:

>What is the maximum size of POST data? A page on the ASP FAQ web site
>(http://classicasp.aspfaq.com/forms/w...arameters.html)
>is confusing me:
>
>"While GET is limited to as low as 1024 characters, POST data is
>limited to 2 MB on IIS 4.0, and 128 KB on IIS 5.0. Each name/value is
>limited to 1024 characters, as imposed by the SGML spec."
>
>Does this last sentence mean that no form field can submit more than
>1024 (or 1024 minus the length of the form field name) characters
>through POST?

That can't possible be true. You use POST to upload entire files, in
which case the size of the request can be many megabytes.

The first paragraph of that article says this:

<quote>
Unlike QueryString data, POSTed form data has a very high number of
allotted characters. This is because the data is transferred in the
headers and not in the URL.
</quote>

This is garbage. Data in a POST request is sent in the body of the
request *AFTER THE HEADERS*, that's why huge amounts of data can be
stuffed in there. I wouldn't put a whole lot of trust in this FAQ
site.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
Slattery_T@bls. gov