[IDV #KOO-280301]: Reading data via URLs in IDV: setting Content-Length and Accept-Ranges headers

Hi Dave,

> It sounds (from an email that you sent after the one above) that you
> are seeing the same behavior on Unidata's server as I see on mine.
> Below is a sample of the type of error I'm getting anyway. It occurs
> when I try to access NOAA MADIS UrbaNet point data in NetCDF format: 
> http://funnel.sfsu.edu/data/LDAD/urbanet/200806010_1200.nc
> 
> Note that the error occurs AFTER I added the entry below to the
> httpd.conf file and restarted the Web server:
> 
> <Directory "/opt/local_htdocs">
> Options FollowSymLinks Indexes
> AllowOverride None
> Order allow,deny
> Allow from all
> Header set Accept-Ranges bytes
> </Directory>
> 
> (There's no Content-Length specification; I see from a later email
> that you're wondering whether that matters or not, too.)
> 
> In contrast, I don't have any problem reading and plotting the same
> data as a local file (from the same server) (see attached JPEG).
> 
> -- Dave

Well, I'm back to thinking that Apache by default will do byte range 
subsetting. Below is what I see if I telnet to your web server and construct a 
byte range request by hand. The request is just three lines of text:

GET /data/LDAD/urbanet/20080610_1200.nc HTTP/1.1
HOST: funnel.sfsu.edu
Range: bytes=0-2000

followed by two blank lines and indicates it only wants the first 2001 bytes of 
the file. The result is a 206 Partial Content which is what we would expect and 
it looks like the response breaks in the middle (I snipped out a bunch of 
stuff).

When I try the URL (http://funnel.sfsu.edu/data/LDAD/urbanet/20080610_1200.nc) 
in the netCDF-Java 4.0 ToolsUI, it opens it just fine. It also opens fine in 
the netCDF-Java 2.2 ToolsUI (which should be the same underlying netCDF-Java 
library the IDV is using).

However, for the dataset URL 
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/testdata/20010721.nc, I can 
telnet to the unidata web server and can get a byte range but it fails in 
netCDF-Java ToolsUI with the exception shown below.

So, I think something other than byte range problems is going on here.

John, any ideas?

Ethan



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
zero.unidata.ucar.edu: telnet funnel.sfsu.edu 80
Trying 130.212.21.19...
Connected to funnel.sfsu.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /data/LDAD/urbanet/20080610_1200.nc HTTP/1.1
HOST: funnel.sfsu.edu
Range: bytes=0-2000

HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:11:03 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.7l DAV/2 PHP/5.2.5
Last-Modified: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:19:39 GMT
ETag: "5e9620-96c41c-44f509e5214c0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 2001
MS-Author-Via: DAV
Content-Range: bytes 0-2000/9880604
Content-Type: application/x-netcdf

CDF
... [snip] ...
Conventions MADIS surface observations, v1.0title3MADIS - Meteorological 
Surface - Integrated Mesonet      
startTime2008-06-10T12:00:00ZendTime2008-06-10T12:59:59ZstationIdVariable   
stationIdstationDescriptionVariable
                                                                                
                           
stationNamestatioMADIS_MESONETnaming_authoritnoaa.govthredds_data_typeStationhistory.revision:
 1.1; date: 2007/01/19; author: barth
                                                                                
                                  creator_nameMichael F. Barth
address@hidden
...[snip]...
includes quality-controlled reports from many observing netw
Connection to funnel.sfsu.edu closed by foreign host.
zero.unidata.ucar.edu: 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" opendap.dap.parser.TokenMgrError: 
Lexical error at line 1, column 3.  Encountered: "<" (60), after : ""
        at 
opendap.dap.parser.DDSParserTokenManager.getNextToken(DDSParserTokenManager.java:1085)
        at opendap.dap.parser.DDSParser.jj_ntk(DDSParser.java:824)
        at opendap.dap.parser.DDSParser.Dataset(DDSParser.java:93)
        at opendap.dap.DDS.parse(DDS.java:1063)
        at opendap.dap.DConnect2$DDSCommand.process(DConnect2.java:452)
        at opendap.dap.DConnect2.openConnection(DConnect2.java:267)
        at opendap.dap.DConnect2.getDDS(DConnect2.java:444)
        at opendap.dap.DConnect2.getDDS(DConnect2.java:424)
        at ucar.nc2.dods.DODSNetcdfFile.<init>(DODSNetcdfFile.java:178)
        at ucar.nc2.dataset.NetcdfDataset.openDODS(NetcdfDataset.java:378)
        at ucar.nc2.dataset.NetcdfDataset.access$000(NetcdfDataset.java:78)
        at ucar.nc2.dataset.NetcdfDataset$2.open(NetcdfDataset.java:368)
        at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFileCache.acquire(NetcdfFileCache.java:188)
        at ucar.nc2.dataset.NetcdfDataset.acquireDODS(NetcdfDataset.java:366)
        at ucar.nc2.dataset.NetcdfDataset.acquireFile(NetcdfDataset.java:257)
        at ucar.nc2.ui.ToolsUI.openFile(ToolsUI.java:760)
        at ucar.nc2.ui.ToolsUI.access$3600(ToolsUI.java:67)




Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: KOO-280301
Department: Support THREDDS
Priority: Normal
Status: Open