Re: Location: when status = 200

Rainer Klute (klute@tommy.informatik.uni-dortmund.de)
Thu, 1 Sep 1994 13:50:36 +0200

wmperry@spry.com writes:
>Chris Adie writes:
>> If the point 126,43 maps to a local file, the server delivers the
>> file directly, without doing a redirect. The problem with this is
>> that the client records the URL as "/UK.MAP?126,43" which causes
>> problems if the document is not located in the same directory as
>> UK.MAP and contains relative URLs. It also causes problems if the
>> document contains an <ISINDEX>.
>>
>> Clearly, the workaround is to use full URLs in the map file, but this
>> results in an unnecessary extra connection.

Not only that: If you want to move a map file to another directory or
even to another host, you have to manually edit the map file, which is
tedious and error prone. I wish we had relative URIs in map files!

>> It would be good if the server could use the Location: header to
>> indicate the actual URL of the document being served. Do any clients
>> support this? If so, I'll implement it in the server.
>
> The Location: header should be _IGNORED_ if it is not given with one of
>the 3xx error codes. If its not, the browser is broken.

(I assume for the moment, that the URI header is meant with
"Location".) The relevant part of the HTTP specification is
<http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Protocols/HTTP/Object_Headers.html#uri>.

And there's no word about any status codes with which URI is
allowed or not allowed. The wording indeed suggests a use of URI
with a 200 header: "... it is guaranteed that if an object is
successfully retrieved using that URI it will be to a certain given
degree the same object as this one."

I think application Chris is talking about is a very good example
of what a URI header is good for with a status code of 200.
Browsers should support it.

Best regards
Rainer Klute

Dipl.-Inform. IRB - immer richtig beraten
Rainer Klute EXUG - European X User Group
Universitdt Dortmund, IRB
D-44221 Dortmund Tel.: +49 231 755-4663

<http://www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/~klute/>