RE: Changing etag and getlastmodified on move/rename

> From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Lisa Dusseault
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 1:13 AM
> To: Webdav WG
> Subject: Changing etag and getlastmodified on move/rename
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What's the general behavior for changing etag and getlastmodified 
> when a resource is simply renamed via a MOVE, or when it's moved 
> to another directory?  
> 
> Do any clients benefit if the ETag is the same after a MOVE?
> Would the client get confused if the ETag is the same but the 
> getlastmodified value is different after a MOVE?

It shouldn't. Also, the other combination can occur as well (ETag changes, but getlastmodified doesn't). This is because the ETag must be unique for all representations produced for a particular URL (+ variant-selecting headers), *not* the resource.

Consider:

/a/b with etag "1"
/a/c with etag "1"
MOVE /a/b -> a/c

The resulting ETag for "/a/c" MUST NOT be 1.

If a server needs a way to robustly identify a resource indepedantly of the URL, it should use DAV:resource-id.

Julian

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Received on Thursday, 7 August 2003 03:03:56 UTC