W3C home > Mailing lists > Public > ietf-http-wg@w3.org > January to March 1997

Re: What method for Location?

From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@kiwi.ICS.UCI.EDU>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 18:05:35 -0800
To: Yuan John Jiang <yjj@mci.net>
Cc: http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <9703121805.aa19169@paris.ics.uci.edu>
X-Mailing-List: <http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com> archive/latest/2630
>I looked into that section.  The spec does not explicitly say which method
>should be used for the NEWURL.  The notes for 301 and 302 responses,
>     Note: When automatically redirecting a POST request after receiving
>     a 302 status code, some existing HTTP/1.0 user agents will
>     erroneously change it into a GET request.
>imply that POST should be used.  But why not say it explicitly?

Because it doesn't need to.  Redirecting the request means redirecting
the request (which includes the method); changing the method means
changing the request.

>On the other hand, the 303 response does have the need to redirect
>"POST URL" to "GET NEWURL".  A header in the response should be added
>to indicate the new method to be used.  If this header is not in the spec,
>it should be added.

No, there is never any ambiguity about what method should be used.

  a) For 301, 302: always the same method as the original request
  b) For 303: always GET

Thus, there is nothing for the server to communicate to the client
other than the response code.

 ...Roy T. Fielding
    Department of Information & Computer Science    (fielding@ics.uci.edu)
    University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3425    fax:+1(714)824-4056
    http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/
Received on Wednesday, 12 March 1997 19:08:32 UTC

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