[11677] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: 404 Error "Standards"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George Phillips)
Thu Aug 17 12:44:44 2000
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2000 12:28:11 -0400 (EDT)
Old-X-Envelope-From: www-talk-request@tux.w3.org Thu Aug 17 12:28:09 2000
Message-ID: <399C126A.501EA10A@opentext.com>
From: George Phillips <phillips@opentext.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: David Trout <dtrout@sprintmail.com>
CC: "Siegel, David" <David.Siegel@dialogic.com>,
"'www-talk@w3.org'" <www-talk@w3.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Old-X-Envelope-To: www-talk
Resent-From: gerald@w3.org
Resent-To: www-talk@w3.org
David Trout wrote:
> You might also consider checking only the first digit for a "4" or a "5"
> instead of "404" specifically, since there are other errors besides 'Not
> Found' that indicates a given document in inaccessable. (The list of
> possible response codes and what they mean are documented in section 10.)
Having been down this road, I think "inaccessable" needs emphasis. Many
other 400 series error codes don't deny the existence of the URL just that
you haven't the proper access credentials. A browser may well be able to
access the URL because either (a) the user knows the password or (b) the
browser knows the password (NTLM authentication). Of course, the browser
may know about many other important bits such as proxies.
And don't bother using "HEAD" -- you'll get the wrong answer too many
times. Just use GET.
-- George
