Re: BASE interpretation

Roy T. Fielding (fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU)
Thu, 13 Oct 1994 05:27:08 +0100

John Franks writes:

> While we're on the subject of relative URLs I would like to know if
> they are allowed in HTTP redirects. I have not found a browser (though
> I haven't tested a lot) which allows a relative URL with a "302 Found"
> or "301 Moved" response from a server. This seems wrong to me, but
> the fact that no one seems to support it makes me feel like the only
> one in the band marching in step. What's the story?

It has always been my impression that only absolute URIs were allowed,
but then I had the same impression about the Referer: field and that one
seems to allow relative URIs (Why? It makes no sense to use relative there).

What would be the benefit of allowing relative URIs in a redirect?
I can imagine they would save space if there were a lot of vary sets,
but would that offset the cost of parsing? Perhaps. It certainly makes
more sense to have relative URIs here than it does for Referer.

.....Roy Fielding ICS Grad Student, University of California, Irvine USA
<fielding@ics.uci.edu>
<URL:http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/grad/Software/fielding>