Re: [Bug 12] Destination header "consistent"

Trying to fill in a little background here: we've discussed this 
related issues before, from June 22 to 26, 2003 and Oct 9 2003.  I 
think part of what we concluded was that if a resource that is 
mentioned in a PROPFIND response would normally return a Location 
header (if you did a HEAD to that resource alone) we needed to find a 
way to return the same info inside the PROPFIND response. So we 
discussed use of 302/303 and a <DAV:location> element to provide the 
information that would have been in the Location header, all inside the 
207 response.

But a slightly different case: if *all* of the resources had been 
redirected (if the target collection itself or a parent had been 
redirected) then one single Location header for the entire response 
might work for the whole shebang.  Thus, I don't agree that returning 
207 with a Location header is meaningless.  (I have no reason to 
disagree with the assertion that existing implementations probably 
don't do that, though).

It might well be premature optimization, however.  The "dumber" way to 
handle this case -- when the request is to a collection that has been 
moved/redirected -- is simply to return the appropriate 300 level 
response and Location and make the client repeat the request against 
the new URL.  Two roundtrips, but probably not a case worth optimizing 
for, because we'd have to define either how to combine the Location 
header with relative URLs inside the response, or how the Location 
header must be consistent with absolute URLs inside the response.

Is there consensus that the Location header MUST NOT be used with 207?  
(and while we're at it, should we generalize to all status responses 
besides 201 and 301, 302, 303, 305, 307?)

Lisa

On Oct 22, 2005, at 1:26 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:

>
> Cullen Jennings wrote:
>> Another ignorant questions but ... Do existing servers include 
>> Locations
>> headers. For any generic header X, if servers use it or clients 
>> expect it,
>> then I would hope the spec talked about what needed to be in header 
>> X. If no
>> one uses header X (and sound like you are saying it is hard to imagine
>> anyone uses since no one knows what it means) then the spec should 
>> ignore it
>> or say not to use it.
>
> As far as I can tell, returning a "Location" response header with 
> status 207 is completely meaningless, and I'm not aware of any server 
> doing that.
>
> Best regards, Julian
>

Received on Saturday, 22 October 2005 17:45:07 UTC