RE: 301/302

Agreed but it is the lesser evil. It doesn't break anyone. That is the
price we pay for backwards compatibility. My advice to a script writer
is use 302 if you want to always redirect to GET and use 307 if you want
to redirect to the same method.
	Yaron

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Josh Cohen [SMTP:josh@netscape.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, September 03, 1997 3:36 PM
> To:	Larry Masinter
> Cc:	Klaus Weide; Yaron Goland;
> http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
> Subject:	Re: 301/302
> 
> Ok, lets assume for the moment that we adopt the 307 proposal.
> (hypothetically)..
> 
> Now, Im joe CGI script writer, and Im writing a new CGI script.
> I want to make the client do the "redirect with GET behavior".
> So, I read the spec and figure out what to do.
> Hmm.. 302 is deprecated, so I shouldnt use that.
> Ahah! 303, thats what I want..
> So, I code my script to respond with a 303, confident that the 
>  client will come back with a GET for the location: I specify.
> 
> NOPE.
> 90% of the browsers today dont support 303 (yet).
> If this isnt backwards incompatible, what is?
> 
> So, I could either:
>  1) send 302, ( yeah it says 'deprecated', but it will live forever,
> 		it will never be 'safe' to send 303 )
> 
>  2) only send 303 if the request was HTTP/1.1
> This gets ugly..
> 
> It seems to me that the "swap" proposal only leaves an ambiguous
>  case, with the potential to fail for implementations who
>  follow the 'interim spec' (prior to the swap), but remains
>  mostly functional with 90% of the existing browsers.
> 
> The "307" proposal, will allow currently functioning CGI
>  scripts to continue to work, but it will be a very long
>  time until a CGI implementor can feel comfortable with
>  returning a 303.
> 
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> Josh Cohen <josh@netscape.com>		      Netscape
> Communications Corp.
> http://people.netscape.com/josh/
>                                 "You can land on the sun, but only at
> night" << File: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature >>

Received on Wednesday, 3 September 1997 20:07:42 UTC