Using HEAD rather than GET

Hi,

>From what I can see in the current code, it seems we're using HTTP GET
for all our checks for external resources; there are quite a few cases
where a HTTP HEAD would be sufficient:
* embedded resources (style sheets, images, objects) whose content-type
is not in the DDC
* linked resources (in LINK_TARGET_FORMAT) where we really only care
about the content type

In practice, this probably means always start with a HEAD (except on the
primary document), and only do a GET when the context and the
content-type justifies it.

This would certainly help in terms of performance, and make it more
likely that we can use the library even on links-heavy pages.

Unfortunately, the behavior seems to pretty down in the stack of the
code, and I don't think my limited Java abilities would allow me to make
such a refactoring - anyone volunteering?

Dom

Received on Tuesday, 23 October 2007 18:50:21 UTC