Documentation of HttpRequest.META could note possibly surprising type values

[Roy Smith]

HttpRequest.METASERVER_PORT, returns a string (i.e. "80"). It really should be an integer.

Some argument could be made that it really *should* be a string (see ​http://tinyurl.com/3fpb6px). If it is decided that string is correct, then at least it should be clearly documented. I think most people would expect a network port to be an integer.

[Karen Tracey]

SERVER_PORT is coming from the underlying (or copied in, for older Django) Python wsgiref implementation (see ​http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/532cad687332/Lib/wsgiref/simple_server.py#l56). Note CONTENT_LENGTH is also a string value. I don't believe Django should change either of these, but if someone wants to provide a doc patch that notes that these values in Request.META are strings I suppose that might avoid some confusion for some people.

[Roy Smith]

Since this appears to be an intentional decision, and changing it would break backwards compatibility, I agree that documenting this (and CONTENT_LENGTH, and any others) would be a sufficient fix.

[Bernhard Essl]

I added a patch with warning signs :).
I've also changed the description of the other keys a bit.

[Aymeric Augustin]

The patch looks good to me.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

Out of deference to people who have English as a second (or third or seventeenth) language, I'm going to leave most of these changes as they currently are. My understanding (from doing a internationalisation support for most of a decade) is that possessive form constructions are harder to unambiguously understand than the slightly more passive phrasing we have here. It's a bit of a judgement call, I'll admit.

Will commit the additions for LENGTH, TYPE, etc, though.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

In [16644]:

Improved documentation around HTTP server meta variables.

Fixed #16581, with thanks to Bernhard Essl.