Proposal for i70: cacheability of status 303

<http://www3.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/70>

I've pasted Roy's original proposal for this issue below; I saw a few  
requests for tweaks that I think can be adopted as the editors see  
fit, and several +1s. I think we have consensus here; comments?

==============
10.3.4.  303 See Other

   The server directs the user agent to a different resource, indicated
   by a URI in the Location header field, that provides an indirect
   response to the original request.  The user agent MAY perform a GET
   request on the URI in the Location field in order to obtain a
   representation corresponding to the response, be redirected again,
   or end with an error status.  The Location URI is not a substitute
   reference for the originally requested resource.

   The 303 status is generally applicable to any HTTP method.  It is
   primarily used to allow the output of a POST action to redirect
   the user agent to a selected resource, since doing so provides the
   information corresponding to the POST response in a form that
   can be separately identified, bookmarked, and cached independent
   of the original request.

   A 303 response to a GET request indicates that the requested
   resource does not have a representation of its own that can be
   transferred by the server over HTTP.  The Location URI indicates a
   resource that is descriptive of the requested resource such that
   the follow-on representation may be useful without implying that
   that it adequately represents the previously requested resource.
   Note that answers to the questions of what can be represented, what
   representations are adequate, and what might be a useful description
   are outside the scope of HTTP and thus entirely determined by the
   resource owner(s).

   A 303 response SHOULD NOT be cached unless it is indicated as
   cacheable by Cache-Control or Expires header fields.  Except for
   responses to a HEAD request, the entity of a 303 response SHOULD
   contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the Location URI.
==============



--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Thursday, 3 April 2008 02:19:04 UTC