[ic] HEAD method and mv_tmp_session

[Mike Heins]

Quoting John Young (john_young at sonic.net):
> 
> Any thoughts here on whether or not the HTTP HEAD method
> should have a true mv_tmp_session?
> 
> I'm kind of thinking it should since AFAIK HEAD is primarily
> used for link checking.  Also, if a browser does both GETs
> and HEADs when a user visits a page (I think Safari does this
> sometimes, unless I'm seeing scripts with phony User Agents),
> a bunch of non-visited pages can show up in the session history.
> 
> I'm not sure if this would simply boil down to having:
> 
>     $CGI::values{mv_tmp_session} = 1 if ("\U$CGI::request_method" eq 
> 'HEAD');
> 
> in Server.pm in the else{} just after the POST and PUT conditions.
> I'm quite concerned about what I could end up breaking, however.
> 
> Ideally, HEAD wouldn't eat as many system resources as GET, but
> I'm not sure how easy it would be to have Interchange bail once
> it knows the HTTP status code.
> 
> Any thoughts are much appreciated...

HEAD is only done to get an If-Modified-Since: status, usually.

Since we don't really handle caching, we should probably have an option
to not even do any catalog processing at all, just return some content
saying "don't cache".

I am not a browser/HTTP guru, so if we have any out there 
that can contribute it would be helpful. I can be useful making
the appropriate changes to IC, but not necessarily in determining
what we should do.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.765.647.1295  tollfree 800-949-1889 <mike at perusion.com>

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