Re: Some suggested changes to the HTTP draft
John Franks (john@math.nwu.edu)
Sat, 17 Jan 1998 08:27:38 -0600 (CST)
On Sat, 17 Jan 1998, Jacob Palme wrote:
>
> I suggest this is changed to:
>
> If a cache receives a successful response where the Content-Location
> field in the *outermost* HTTP heading matches that of an existing cache
> entry for the same Request-URI, and whose entity-tag differs from that
> of the existing entry, and whose Date is more recent than that of the
> existing entry, the existing entry SHOULD NOT be returned in response
> to future requests and should be deleted from the cache.
>
> Reason: I think this is what you really mean. To use Content-Locations
> in headings inside MIME Multipart objects for cache matching can be
> dangerous.
With a couple of minor well specified exceptions HTTP does not deal
with Multipart objects as multipart, but as a single object. There
are no outer vs inner headers; only one set of headers. What you
might call inner headers are just part of the data to HTTP. The
content of a MIME Multipart object is no different than the content of
a binary file to HTTP. An HTTP cache should be no more likely to use
a heading inside a MIME Multipart object than to use a string inside
an object of type application/octet-stream.
John Franks
john@math.nwu.edu