Re: expires (was: lynx-dev cache control)

[Webmaster Jim]

On Sun, Sep 12, 1999 at 10:41:46AM -0500, Klaus Weide wrote:
> > "Guilty."  The now-old book I have on HTTP recommends putting expire
> > times in META tags.  Where should they go?
> ITYM book on HTML?  I cannot image a book _on HTTP_ would recommend
> that.

Yes, that's what I mean.  It does have a chapter on HTTP :-)
 
> How to specify header fields for real HTTP headers is a matter of
> configuring the server.  In Apache you can do a lot in .htaccess files
> (more so in later versions), if properly enabled.  Web space providers
> that don't allow customers to set any HTTP headers aren't really doing
> their job.  In CGI scripts you can set most header fields directly of
> course.
> ...
> Unfortunately putting this stuff in META doesn't "result" in this header
> to be sent by the server _as_ an HTTP header, for any known servers.

You're right. The server I use a lot (wn) reads HTML pages and caches
this data so that HEAD requests will show what the specs intend. Other
servers don't do it this way:

bash-2.01$ grep -i expir index.html
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="Tue, 10 Oct 1994 14:11:01 GMT">

bash-2.01$ lynx -dump -head http://blender/~jim/index.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: WN/2.1.7
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 17:35:04 GMT
Last-Modified: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 17:27:24 GMT
ETag: "37dbe27c=2b3c=1e90"
Expires: Tue, 10 Oct 1994 14:11:01 GMT
Content-type: text/html
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-length: 7824

bash-2.01$ grep index.html index.cache
file=index.html&content=text/html&expires=Tue, 10 Oct 1994 14:11:01 
GMT&title=File index.html

I think of it as preparing the HTTP, not the server, but that's really
what is being done.

------
<http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/db/users/us/md/lib/bcpl/jspath/face.xbm>
<http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?q=%22web+home+for+jim+spath%22>
Marvin the Paranoid Android says:
Come on then; let's get this over with as soon as possible.