Re: #312: should there be a permanent variant of 307?

On Fri, 4 Nov 2011, Julian Reschke wrote:

>>>>>> <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/312>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So now that we have allowed UAs to rewrite a 301 POST to GET 
>>>>>> (see<http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/160>), the spec 
>>>>>> doesn't have a permanent redirect that always preserves the method.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> (We *do* have the equivalent for temporary redirects: 307).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So...:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 1) Is this a problem?
>>>>> 
>>>>> First thing is... was 301 ever used to change entries in a bookmark or a 
>>>>> link in a page? If not, then it's not a problem worth adding a new 
>>>>> status code.
>>>> 
>>>> +1
>>>> 
>>>>> A 307 with a long enough cache time should be enough to redirect people.
>>>>> If it is, then 2a would be the best option (in another doc)
>>>> 
>>>> But then you have a deployment problem; it won't be backwards-compatible 
>>>> with most existing browsers (i.e., the redirect won't work), so it'll 
>>>> never get out there.
>>>> 
>>>> AFAICT the only way to deploy would be to mint a new CC directive that 
>>>> means "forever" -- and we've already discussed that and decided not to go 
>>>> that way, IIRC.
>>>> 
>>>> My personal .02 - I think this is close with no action, or at most a bit 
>>>> of prose in 307.
>>>> ...
>>> 
>>> OK, here's something we could say in the text about 307:
>>>
>>>       Note: this status code is similar to 302 Found, except that it
>>>       does not allow rewriting the request method from POST to GET.
>>>       There is no equivalent counterpart for 301 Moved Permanently.
>>>       Servers that need a "permanent" variant of this status code can
>>>       specify it's lifetime using Cache-Control (Section 3.2 of
>>>       [Part6]), for instance by using "Cache-Control: max-age=315360000"
>>>       (an expiry time ten years in the future).
>>> 
>> 
>> +0 -- not against it, not sure it's really necessary (but happy to put it 
>> in if that moves us forward).
>> ...
>
> I think *some* prose around this is useful, as otherwise the same questions 
> continue to come up again and again.
>
> *If* we believe that the decorate-with-Cache-Control thingy works, we should 
> say so. If we do not, we could shorten the note.

Well, caching a redirect is different than stating that it's permanent. 
The best thing we can do here would probably be to rename 307's reason 
phrase to "Proper Redirect" instead of "Temporary Redirect"...

Also an expiry far in time is still valid cache information, saying "over 
XX seconds, consider it as permanent" seems weird, at worst, introducing a 
'permanent' Cache-Control might help (as it might help for other things 
than doing a "proper 301").

-- 
Baroula que barouleras, au tiéu toujou t'entourneras.

         ~~Yves

Received on Friday, 4 November 2011 14:21:15 UTC