[whatwg] XMLHttpRequest: should UA pretend a 304 response is a 200?

[Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen]

On 4 Jul 2005 at 17:18, I wrote:

> Thanks for sharing your implementation experience regarding status 
> 304. Suggestion withdrawn 

This is just summarising some discussions at Opera for documentation 
and consideration :-)

Some people feel we should consider the UA a sort of caching proxy 
server between the web application and the web for XMLHttpRequest 
purposes. This would mean using the instructions of the HTTP protocol 
specification for the interaction between the script and its 
environment. This may imply that a client with a cached document 
should return a status 200 when the requested document matches one in 
the cache (whether or not the UA has checked with the server if the 
resource is current).

That's an interesting point of view. I'm quite convinced by Jim's 
reference to systems he has implemented, but if we use the HTTP spec 
for communicating between the JS app and the UA perhaps we can use 
headers to have it both ways depending on the cache-control and/or 
pragma instructions? I have to read the HTTP spec's cache part much 
more closely before I can give any concrete suggestions though..
-- 
Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen
http://www.hallvord.com/