Re: distinguising user- from browser-generated requests

• From: Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
• Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 19:28:22 +0200 (MET DST)
• To: nick@ucd.ie (Nicholas Kushmerick)
• Cc: www-talk@w3.org
• Message-Id: <199906231728.TAA03822@wsooti08.win.tue.nl>

Nicholas Kushmerick:
>
>When an HTML page is rendered, the browser might spawn additional requests 
>to the server (images, frames, style sheets, applets, ...).  Within HTTP, 
>can the server reliably distinguish such "browser-generated" requests from 
>actual user requests (ie, when a user clicks on a link)?

No, there is no reliable way to do this in HTTP.

Examining the 'referer' HTTP request header field could offer an
unreliable way: you will have to experiment a bit.  I'm not quite sure
what the different browsers send in the 'referer' of inlined content:
the URI of the enclosing page or the URI of the page referring to the
enclosing page.

Koen.

Received on Wednesday, 23 June 1999 13:28:29 UTC