Re: NEW ISSUE: Methods and Caching

On fre, 2008-11-14 at 19:11 -0800, Mark Nottingham wrote:
> RFC2616 does not clearly define what the relationship of the request  
> method is to caching. In particular, does the method form part of the  
> cache key?

As already discussed extensively: no.

> If the method does not form part of the cache key, a cache can  
> effectively only be used to satisfy GET and HEAD requests, but a non- 
> GET/HEAD response could "populate" the cache if it had explicit expiry  
> information; e.g., a POST response could be used to satisfy a future  
> GET request (if the POST response were marked as explicitly cacheable).

Yes.

> If the method does form part of the cache key, any method (e.g.,  
> OPTIONS, PROPFIND) could potentially be cached and returned in  
> response to future requests.

Indeed.

My proposal is to make the URI-only GET/HEAD cache model more explicit,
so future protocol additions hopefully do not fall into the same trap of
inventing new GET-type methods like WebDAV did..

Regards
Henrik