MAY"> MUST"> MUST NOT"> OPTIONAL"> RECOMMENDED"> REQUIRED"> SHALL"> SHALL NOT"> SHOULD"> SHOULD NOT"> ]> greenbytes GmbH

Hafenweg 16 MuensterNW48155 Germany +49 251 2807760 julian.reschke@greenbytes.de http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/

Several hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) extensions use methods other than GET to expose information. This has the drawback that this kind of information is harder to identify (missing a URL to which a GET request could be applied) and to cache. This document specifies a simple extension header through which a server can advertise a substitute URL that an HTTP client subsequently can use with the GET method. Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) mailing list at ietf-http-wg@w3.org, which may be joined by sending a message with subject "subscribe" to ietf-http-wg-request@w3.org. Discussions of the HTTP working group are archived at . XML versions, latest edits and the issues list for this document are available from .

Several HTTP () extensions use methods other than GET to expose information. This has the drawback that this kind of information is harder to identify (missing a URL to which a GET request could be applied) and to cache. This document specifies a simple extension header through which a server can advertise a substitute URL that an HTTP client subsequently can use with the GET method.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL-NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in . The terminology used here follows and extends that in the HTTP specification .

The GET-Location entity header identifies a substitute resource that can be used in subsequent requests for the same information, but using the GET method. Note that, by definition, the GET-Location header can only used on responses to safe methods.

Syntax (using the the augmented Backus-Naur Form (BNF) defined in ): GET-Location = "GET-Location" ":" "<" Simple-ref ">" *( ";" location-directive ) ) location-directive = "etag=" entity-tag | "max-age" "=" delta-seconds | location-extension location-extension = token [ "=" ( token | quoted-string ) ] Simple-ref = absolute-URI | ( path-absolute [ "?" query ] ) absolute-URI = <defined in > delta-seconds = <defined in > entity-tag = <defined in > path-absolute = <defined in > quoted-string = <defined in > query = <defined in > token = <defined in >

Where: Contains either the URI or the absolute path of the location. The server can include the entity tag for the returned entity, if it would have been retrieved by a GET request to the substitute resource. Note that this is different from the value of the "ETag" header which could also be included in the response, but which would apply to the resource identified by the Request-URI. Specifies a lifetime for the information returned by this header. A client &MUST; discard any information related to this header after the specified amount of time. The freshness lifetime for the information obtained from the GET-Location header does not depend on the cacheability of the response it was obtained from (which, in general, may not be cacheable at all). The "max-age" directive allows the server to specify after how many seconds a client should discard knowledge about the alternate resource. In absence of that header, clients &SHOULD; discard the information after 3600 seconds.

This specification introduces no new security considerations beyond those discussed in .

This document specifies the new HTTP header listed below, to be added to the permanent registry (see ). GET-Location http standard IETF of this specification

Harvard University

sob@harvard.edu

University of California, Irvine

fielding@ics.uci.edu

W3C

jg@w3.org

Compaq Computer Corporation

mogul@wrl.dec.com

MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

frystyk@w3.org

Xerox Corporation

masinter@parc.xerox.com

Microsoft Corporation

paulle@microsoft.com

W3C

timbl@w3.org

World Wide Web Consortium

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02139 USA +1-617-253-5702 +1-617-258-5999 timbl@w3.org http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

Day Software

5251 California Ave., Suite 110 Irvine CA 92617 USA +1-949-679-2960 +1-949-679-2972 fielding@gbiv.com http://roy.gbiv.com/

Adobe Systems Incorporated

345 Park Ave San Jose CA 95110 USA +1-408-536-3024 LMM@acm.org http://larry.masinter.net/

Rational Software

geoffrey.clemm@rational.com

IBM

jamsden@us.ibm.com

IBM

tim_ellison@uk.ibm.com

Microsoft

ckaler@microsoft.com

UC Santa Cruz, Dept. of Computer Science

ejw@cse.ucsc.edu

CommerceNet

2064 Edgewood Dr. Palo Alto CA 94303 US ldusseault@commerce.net

joe@bitworking.org http://bitworking.org/

Sun Microsystems

Marc.Hadley@sun.com http://sun.com/

mnot@pobox.com http://mnot.net/

BEA Systems, Inc.

dorchard@bea.com http://bea.com/

In this example the client uses the WebDAV PROPFIND method ("HTTP Extensions for Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning", ) to get a list of all collection members, along with their DAV:resourcetype property ():

>>Request PROPFIND /collection/ HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Depth: 1 Content-Type: application/xml <propfind xmlns="DAV:"> <prop> <resourcetype/> </prop> </propfind>

The response contains the requested information, plus the GET-Location header, identifying a separate resource which can provide the same information using the HTTP GET method:

>>Response HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status Content-Type: application/xml GET-Location: <http://example.com/collection/;members>; etag="123"; max-age=3600 <multistatus xmlns="DAV":> <response> <href>/collection/</href> <propstat> <prop> <resourcetype><collection/></resourcetype> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> <response> <href>/collection/member</href> <propstat> <prop> <resourcetype/> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> </multistatus>

The response provided the URL of the substitute resource, so when the client wishes to refresh the collection information, it uses that URI. The response contained the entity tag for the data being returned, so it can make the request conditional:

>>Request GET /collection/;members HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Accept: application/xml If-None-Match: "123"

The information did not change, so the server does not need to return new data:

>>Response HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified

Later on, the client tries again. This time, however, a second member has been added:

>>Request GET /collection/;members HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Accept: application/xml If-None-Match: "123"

>>Response HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/xml ETag: "124" <multistatus xmlns="DAV":> <response> <href>/collection/</href> <propstat> <prop> <resourcetype><collection/></resourcetype> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> <response> <href>/collection/member</href> <propstat> <prop> <resourcetype/> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> <response> <href>/collection/member2</href> <propstat> <prop> <resourcetype/> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> </multistatus>

Finally, the collection has been removed by somebody else. The client tries a refresh:

>>Request GET /collection/;members HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Accept: application/xml If-None-Match: "124"

>>Response HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

Note that it may be hard to compute strong entity tags for more complex PROPFIND responses. For instance, most properties depend on the state of the collection member, not the state of the collection itself, and thus the response will change even though the state of the collection itself did not change. This is why this extension leaves it to the server whether to return a GET-Location at all, and if so, whether to return cache validators along with it.

Here, the client uses the WebDAV PROPFIND method () to obtain a custom property:

>>Request PROPFIND /collection/member HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Depth: 0 Content-Type: application/xml <propfind xmlns="DAV:"> <prop> <title xmlns="http://ns.example.com/"/> </prop> </propfind>

>>Response HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status Content-Type: application/xml GET-Location: </collection/member;prop=title>; etag="1" <multistatus xmlns="DAV":> <response> <href>/collection/member</href> <propstat> <prop> <title xmlns="http://ns.example.com/" >Document Title</title> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> </multistatus>

>>Request GET /collection/member;prop=title HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com If-None-Match: "1"

>>Response HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified

Later, the request is repeated after the title property indeed changed...:

>>Request GET /collection/member;prop=title HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com If-None-Match: "1"

>>Response HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/xml ETag: "2" <multistatus xmlns="DAV":> <response> <href>/collection/member</href> <propstat> <prop> <title xmlns="http://ns.example.com/" >New Document Title</title> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> </multistatus>

Although this example may look like every WebDAV property would need a separate entity tag, this is of course not the case. For instance, a server that stores all custom properties in a single place (like a properties file) could use the same computation for the entity tag for all properties. Also, it could implement resources representing multiple custom property values the same way.

Here, the client uses the DeltaV DAV:version-tree report ("Versioning Extensions to WebDAV", ) to obtain the members of the version history of a version-controlled resource.

>>Request REPORT /collection/member HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Depth: 0 Content-Type: application/xml <version-tree xmlns="DAV:"> <prop> <resourcetype/> </prop> </version-tree>

>>Response HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status Content-Type: application/xml GET-Location: </version-storage/12345/;justmembers> <multistatus xmlns="DAV":> <response> <href>/version-storage/12345/V1</href> <propstat> <prop> <resourcetype><collection/></resourcetype> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> <response> <href>/version-storage/12345/V2</href> <propstat> <prop> <resourcetype><collection/></resourcetype> </prop> <status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status> </propstat> </response> </multistatus>

Note that in this case, the substitute resource can be almost identical to the one from the PROPFIND/Depth:1 example: the only difference being that the report result does not contain a DAV:response element for the collection itself.

This section discusses some related HTTP features and explains why they can't be used for the given use case.

defines the status code 303 (See Other): The response to the request can be found under a different URI and &SHOULD; be retrieved using a GET method on that resource. This method exists primarily to allow the output of a POST-activated script to redirect the user agent to a selected resource. The new URI is not a substitute reference for the originally requested resource. The 303 response &MUST-NOT; be cached, but the response to the second (redirected) request might be cacheable. On first glance, it may look as if this addresses exactly the given use case. However: It says: "The new URI is not a substitute reference for the originally requested resource. The 303 response &MUST-NOT; be cached, but the response to the second (redirected) request might be cacheable." That is, the information about the alternate resource is not cacheable. Servers returning a 303 status instead of the one expected by the client, such as 207 Multistatus, would likely break existing clients.

states: The Content-Location value is not a replacement for the original requested URI; it is only a statement of the location of the resource corresponding to this particular entity at the time of the request. (...) However, the purpose of "GET-Location" is to enable the server to provide a permanent replacement URI.

states: The Location response-header field is used to redirect the recipient to a location other than the Request-URI for completion of the request or identification of a new resource. (...) Neither of these cases ("redirect to a location for completion of the request" and "identification of a new resource") matches the use case "GET-Location" covers.

Should it be possible to use Content Negotiation on the resource identified by GET-Location? A use case could be a metadata provider that would support different formats, such as WebDAV's multistatus format (MIME type missing!), RDF, JSON, whatever. This could be done using a location-extension specifying the Accept header for the GET operation.

Should we allow servers to return URI templates (), so that clients can compute substitute URLs for other requests as well? For instance, this could be done by allowing a URI template instead of the Simple-ref, and to return another template specifying how to derive the template variable from the Request-URI:

>>Request PROPFIND /documents/a/b HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Depth: 0 Content-Type: application/xml

>>Response HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status Content-Type: application/xml GET-Location: </metadata/{path};members>; path-template=</a/b/{path}> ...

So in this case, the actual URI to be used would be <http://example.com/metadata/a/b;members>.

Do we need a registry for new location-directive values?