Re: Comments on draft HTTP/1.1 spec, v3
David W. Morris (dwm@xpasc.com)
Fri, 1 May 1998 09:11:23 -0700 (PDT)
On Fri, 1 May 1998, Dave Kristol wrote:
> That leads me to my own question: If there's an error on a HEAD
> request, should the server return an entity, or just the headers.
> (Apparently the latter.) Example:
>
> HEAD / HTTP/1.1
> <CRLF>
>
> There's no Host header, so the server responds "400 Bad Request". With,
> or without, entity?
The only reliable answer is without. But beyond that, the spec is pretty
clear. Same as GET except for no message-body. So if the client wants
to know why
GET / HTTP/1.1
<CRLF>
would have failed, it must try a GET.
The flaw in the HEAD request design is that it should have returned its
result as an entity rather than as a simple modified GET response. But
that change is too late.
Dave Morris