- From: Shel Kaphan <sjk@amazon.com>
- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 17:09:20 -0800
- To: Ari Luotonen <luotonen@netscape.com>
- Cc: http-wg mailing list <http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Ari Luotonen writes: ... > An additional feature is to say "give me a range if the document > hasn't changed, but if it has, send me the entire document". Similar > to If-modified-since, but still quite different... What would you > call such a header? > I'd use "last-modified", since what you're essentially saying is "the document I received part of claimed to have been last-modified on <date>, and now I want another piece of this document, unless it has changed since that date." Since we want some specific behavior in both cases -- in one case the whole document is returned, and in the other case only a range -- it isn't quite right to use "if-not-modified-since. (i.e. something happens if it *is* modified, too). Last-modified would reasonably encapsulate everything you need to say. But I'd like to request that we break with tradition slightly, and as an option allow something other than (or in addition to) last-modified here: a checksum field, the rule being that you return in the request the checksum received with the original fragment of the document. --Shel Kaphan
Received on Monday, 13 November 1995 17:22:01 UTC