RE: HTTP 301 responses for POST

Cyrus Daboo wrote:
> --On December 23, 2008 2:24:21 PM +0100 Julian Reschke
> <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> >> The 301 and 302 sections of HTTPbis seems to make the implicit, or
> >> perhaps not clearly stated, assumption that the new request shall
> >> use the same method as the request triggering the response.
> >
> > Just for the record: this text hasn't been changes since RFC2616...
> 
> The current "Note" for 301 is:
> 
>       Note: When automatically redirecting a POST request after
>       receiving a 301 status code, some existing HTTP/1.0 user agents
>       will erroneously change it into a GET request.
> 
> The reality is that it is not just HTTP/1.0 user agents that do this
> now but also HTTP/1.1. I think we need to reflect this reality more
> clearly (e.g., just remove the text "HTTP/1.0").
> 
> BTW this behavior is encouraged not only by user agents but also HTTP
> client libraries that do it. e.g. check out the note in the Python
> documentation:
> <http://www.python.org/doc/2.5/lib/http-redirect-handler.html>.

A.J. Flavell wrote what may be the most comprehensive article on this,
which is unfortunately only available in the wayback machine now:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/www/pos
t-redirect.html


Robert Brewer
fumanchu@aminus.org

Received on Tuesday, 23 December 2008 18:14:04 UTC