Content-Location in Requests

Section 14.14 (page 120) specifies behavior only for when Content-Location is included in a Response. However, the final paragraph of that section states that "[t]he meaning of the Content-Location header in PUT or POST requests is undefined; servers are free to ignore it in these cases." This implies that, when Content-Location is present in a Request with a method other than PUT or POST, the server needs to handle the header in some fashion. This implied handling does not appear to be specified anywhere in the RFC, and some sections (such as 13.10, page 98) further add to the ambiguity.

My guess is that Content-Location, when present in a Request, tells the server the URI of the enclosed entity, with the side-effect of providing the base URI for the server to resolve relative URIs (presumably within the entity) against. But why would this not be the case for PUT or POST?

Does anyone have any clarification as to what the intent of section 14.14 is?


Thanks,

-- Travis

Received on Thursday, 14 December 2006 20:37:36 UTC