Thanks for the response. I'm using Apache/mod_wsgi and getting error messages in production because my handlers don't know how to handle a HEAD request. If the server is supposed to automatically translate the HEAD requests into GETs, then I probably have something set up incorrectly. Any idea where to start looking?
-- Andrew On Jul 2, 7:16 pm, Graham Dumpleton <graham.dumple...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jul 3, 4:55 am, Andrew Fong <fongand...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > How exactly should I handle a HEAD request in Django? > > > So ... assuming my view looks like this... > > > def handle_request(request): > > if request.method == 'POST': return do_post(request) > > elif request.method == 'GET': return do_get(request) > > elif request.method == 'HEAD': return do_head(request) > > > ... what should the do_head method return? The W3 standard says "The > > HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT return > > a message-body in the response". > > > How exactly do I not return a message body though? Do I just return > > None? Do I return the response I would for a GET and then modify it > > somehow? > > You generally don't need to do anything different, the standard says > 'the ***server***'. > > So, for sane web servers, the underlying server will deal with this > and the application doesn't need to. You should just do exactly what > you would normally do for a GET request. The web server would then > return all the headers but just throw the response content away and > not return it to the client. > > If you do act differently, you potentially break the requirement that > response headers for the HEAD should match what would be returned for > a GET request against same resource. Thus, the suggestion of returning > an empty string could stuff up returned content length for a start. > > FWIW, in Apache/mod_wsgi it will deliberately at times translate a > HEAD into a GET when it is passed into the WSGI application. This will > occur when there are Apache output filters registered that may want to > change response headers and modify the content. For example, > mod_deflate, which would compress the response. If this isn't done and > the application acted differently for a HEAD, then the data received > by Apache output filter would not be the same as for the GET and > result returned to client would be different than what it should be. > > Graham --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
