[Zope] HEAD Requests
Martijn Pieters
mj@antraciet.nl
Wed, 05 May 1999 15:53:49 +0200
At 15:09 05/05/99 , Brian Lloyd wrote:
>I'd like to debate this one a little bit. You are correct in that
>a HEAD on a folder does not behave in quite the same way as a GET
>- that should be fixed. I have tried to use the HTTP spec
>and comparisons with the default behaviors of common servers
>(mainly Apache) in determining what HEAD should do.
>
>Note that on apache, if you do a HEAD on a directory that contains
>no "default document", you also get a 200:
>
>HTTP/1.1 200 OK
>Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 13:06:48 GMT
>Server: Apache/1.3.4 (Unix)
>Connection: close
>Content-Type: text/html
>
>...so I dont necessarily agree that this is incorrect behavior.
Hmm... the HTTP 1.1 specs say that 'the metainformation contained in the
HTTP headers in response to a HEAD request SHOULD be identical to the
information sent in response to a GET request'.
Did you check what the Apache server you tested on returns on a GET
request? It could be it is configured to return a directory listing, at
which point the response to a HEAD request SHOULD give a 200 OK.
On MS IIS, a HEAD or GET request on a directory always returns the same
headers, wether there is a default document or not, and wether directory
browsing is allowed or not. In the last case (no default doc, and browsing
not allowed), the server returns a 403, forbidden.
On Netscape Enterprise 3.0, HEAD and GET headers are also consistently the
same. When Directory Indexing is set to 'None', and there is no default
document, the server returns (both for GET and HEAD), a 500 Server Error
response.
Zope returns a 404 Not Found on a GET on an empty Folder, but a 200 on a
HEAD... not consistent.
--
Martijn Pieters, Web Developer
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