"304" Web log report

[Mark Ellis]

>But what is 304 "Not Modified"?
>

The following is clipped from RFC 1945 (HTTP 1.0 spec):

<snip>--------------------------------------------------------------

   304 Not Modified

   If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is
   allowed, but the document has not been modified since the date and
   time specified in the If-Modified-Since field, the server must
   respond with this status code and not send an Entity-Body to the
   client. Header fields contained in the response should only include
   information which is relevant to cache managers or which may have
   changed independently of the entity's Last-Modified date. Examples
   of relevant header fields include: Date, Server, and Expires. A
   cache should update its cached entity to reflect any new field
   values given in the 304 response.

</snip>--------------------------------------------------------------

In English:

A 304 server log entry means that the browser is checking that it's cached
copy of the file is up to date.  The 304 response from the server tells the
browser that it is, thereby saving a another download.

You can get the RFC at: http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1945.txt


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Mark Ellis
Computer Services Technician            Phone: 604.231.6410
Richmond Public Library                 Email: mark.ellis at rpl.richmond.bc.ca
Richmond, British Columbia
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