OpenAPI: Recommend a standard User-Agent format for REST clients - #17727
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rahulsmahadev wants to merge 1 commit into
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OpenAPI: Recommend a standard User-Agent format for REST clients#17727rahulsmahadev wants to merge 1 commit into
rahulsmahadev wants to merge 1 commit into
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Adds a recommended, consistent User-Agent format to the REST spec so clients identify themselves the same way, and documents that client identification is optional and informational only (not authentication, not capability negotiation). Spec-only; no behavior change. Client libraries would be updated to emit this format as follow-ups.
rahulsmahadev
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August 19, 2026 23:54
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What
Adds a recommended, consistent
User-Agentformat to the REST spec so clients identify themselves the same way, and documents that client identification is optional and informational only.Spec-only proposal
Why
Clients identify themselves inconsistently today, and the most-deployed one doesn't by default:
User-AgentX-Client-Versionrest.client.user-agent)Apache Iceberg <ver> (commit <sha>)— library versionPyIceberg/<ver>PyIceberg <ver>— library versioniceberg-rs/<ver>0.14.1— REST spec versionGoIceberg/<ver>A catalog operator can't reliably tell what's calling: the Java client sends no
User-Agentunless configured, the naming differs across clients, andX-Client-Versioncarries the library version in two clients and the spec version in the other two. None of it is described in the spec.A single recommended format gives operators usable telemetry for observability, debugging, and support, and an Iceberg library token that's always present regardless of the embedding engine.
Proposal
Use the standard
User-Agentheader (RFC 7231): whitespace-separatedproduct/versiontokens, most-specific first (engine → integration → Iceberg library → runtime), with a parenthesized comment as an open extension point.iceberg-java,pyiceberg,iceberg-rust,iceberg-go) is the piece every client can supply and should always be present.Scope / follow-ups
This PR is the spec recommendation. If the format lands, client conformance follows as separate PRs:
rest.client.user-agenta default library token and a way for integrations (Spark/Flink/…) to contribute engine tokens.