[9053] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Browser Interpretation of Location: Header
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Killian)
Thu Aug 31 16:17:56 1995
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 16:13:45 -0400
To: www-talk@w3.org
From: jkillian@access.digex.net (Jim Killian)
Resent-From: www-talk@w3.org
Hi Ya'll,
I'd be interested if there is concensus on this one. I have a CGI program
for processing forms which, upon successful submission (i.e., POSTing),
issues a Location header, as follows:
Location: http://www.someplace.com/thankyou.html
That's it. The server issues a 302 return code.
When using a Netscape 1.2 or Mosaic NCSA 2.0 browser, it works great. It's
an easy way to report a "thank you" message, possibly directing a user
outside the scope of your own location if need be. Unfortunately, SPRY's
2.0 browser returns a server error. After reviewing the server access log,
I can see that it tried to "re-post" the request using (instead of the
original /cgi-bin/doit) /thankyou.html. Yikes!
I've reviewed the HTTP spec, but it was not clear what is the correct
behavior here. Should the browser interpret any redirection as a GET (as
Netscape and Mosaic do), OR, maintain the same operation (in this case,
POST) ? In fact, am I (technically) abusing the ability to override the
Location header by using this methodology. Should I be returning a status
code or something?
Thanx,
Jim Killian
Transphere Interactive
jkillian@access.digex.net
