Re: Location header in HTTP/1.1 & 1.0

Dmitry Beransky:
>
>(could anyone recommend a better place to ask this question?)

The http-wg mailing list is slightly better, but I consider www-talk
to be an appropriate place too.

>
>The current http spec states that:
>   For 201 (Created)
>   responses, the Location is that of the new resource which was created
>   by the request.  For 3xx responses, the location SHOULD indicate the
>   server's preferred URL for automatic redirection to the resource. The
>   field value consists of a single absolute URL.
>
>I'm not quite clear on what happens if the location header is sent with any
>other status code, 200 for example.  Should a client honor the redirection
>or treat it as an invalid http?

The client should only redirect when getting a 3xx response.  If a
location header is present in another type response, the client can
either ignore it, or input it into some mechanism not covered by the
http specification, for example an extra navigation button in the GUI
in case of a 201 response.

The client should *not* treat a 200 with a Location as invalid http.
The general rule for http clients is: if you see some header you never
heard of, you can ignore it and process the rest of the response just
as if the header was not there.

>Regards 
>Dmitry Beransky

Koen.

Received on Friday, 13 November 1998 13:43:27 UTC