- From: David W. Morris <dwm@xpasc.com>
- Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 09:11:23 -0700 (PDT)
- To: Dave Kristol <dmk@bell-labs.com>
- Cc: "Adam M. Donahue" <adam@cyber-guru.com>, http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com, http-wg@hplb.hpl.hp.com
On Fri, 1 May 1998, Dave Kristol wrote: > That leads me to my own question: If there's an error on a HEAD > request, should the server return an entity, or just the headers. > (Apparently the latter.) Example: > > HEAD / HTTP/1.1 > <CRLF> > > There's no Host header, so the server responds "400 Bad Request". With, > or without, entity? The only reliable answer is without. But beyond that, the spec is pretty clear. Same as GET except for no message-body. So if the client wants to know why GET / HTTP/1.1 <CRLF> would have failed, it must try a GET. The flaw in the HEAD request design is that it should have returned its result as an entity rather than as a simple modified GET response. But that change is too late. Dave Morris
Received on Friday, 1 May 1998 09:17:58 UTC