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IETF RFC 7238
Last modified on Saturday, June 7th, 2014
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Reschke
Request for Comments: 7238 greenbytes
Category: Experimental June 2014
ISSN: 2070-1721
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Status Code 308 (Permanent Redirect)
 Abstract
This document specifies the additional Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP) status code 308 (Permanent Redirect).
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for examination, experimental implementation, and
evaluation.
This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF
community. It has received public review and has been approved for
publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not
all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of
Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7238.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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RFC 7238 HTTP Status Code 308 June 2014
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. 308 Permanent Redirect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
4. Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1. Introduction
HTTP defines a set of status codes for the purpose of redirecting a
request to a different URI ([RFC 3986]). The history of these status
codes is summarized in Section 6.4 of [RFC 7231], which also
classifies the existing status codes into four categories.
The first of these categories contains the status codes 301 (Moved
Permanently), 302 (Found), and 307 (Temporary Redirect), which can be
classified as below:
+-------------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+
| | Permanent | Temporary |
+-------------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+
| Allows changing the request method from | 301 | 302 |
| POST to GET | | |
| Does not allow changing the request | - | 307 |
| method from POST to GET | | |
+-------------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+
Section 6.4.7 of [RFC 7231] states that HTTP does not define a
permanent variant of status code 307; this specification adds the
status code 308, defining this missing variant (Section 3).
2. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC 2119].
3. 308 Permanent Redirect
The 308 (Permanent Redirect) status code indicates that the target
resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future
references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs.
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RFC 7238 HTTP Status Code 308 June 2014
Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link
references to the effective request URI (Section 5.5 of [RFC 7230]) to
one or more of the new references sent by the server, where possible.
The server SHOULD generate a Location header field ([RFC 7231],
Section 7.1.2) in the response containing a preferred URI reference
for the new permanent URI. The user agent MAY use the Location field
value for automatic redirection. The server's response payload
usually contains a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new
URI(s).
A 308 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise
indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see
[RFC 7234], Section 4.2.2).
Note: This status code is similar to 301 (Moved Permanently)
([RFC 7231], Section 6.4.2), except that it does not allow changing
the request method from POST to GET.
4. Deployment Considerations
Section 6 of [RFC 7231] requires recipients to treat unknown 3xx
status codes the same way as status code 300 Multiple Choices
([RFC 7231], Section 6.4.1). Thus, servers will not be able to rely
on automatic redirection happening similar to status codes 301, 302,
or 307.
Therefore, initial use of status code 308 will be restricted to cases
where the server has sufficient confidence in the client's
understanding the new code or when a fallback to the semantics of
status code 300 is not problematic. Server implementers are advised
not to vary the status code based on characteristics of the request,
such as the User-Agent header field ("User-Agent Sniffing") -- doing
so usually results in code that is both hard to maintain and hard to
debug and would also require special attention to caching (i.e.,
setting a "Vary" response header field, as defined in Section 7.1.4
of [RFC 7231]).
Note that many existing HTML-based user agents will emulate a refresh
when encountering an HTML <meta> refresh directive ([HTML]). This
can be used as another fallback. For example:
Client request:
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
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RFC 7238 HTTP Status Code 308 June 2014
Server response:
HTTP/1.1 308 Permanent Redirect
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Location: http://example.com/new
Content-Length: 454
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Permanent Redirect</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="0; url=http://example.com/new">
</head>
<body>
<p>
The document has been moved to
<a href="http://example.com/new"
>http://example.com/new</a>.
</p>
</body>
</html>
5. Security Considerations
All security considerations that apply to HTTP redirects apply to the
308 status code as well (see Section 9 of [RFC 7231]).
6. IANA Considerations
The registration below has been added to the "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) Status Code Registry" (defined in Section 8.2 of
[RFC 7231] and located at
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes>):
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------------+
| Value | Description | Reference |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------------+
| 308 | Permanent Redirect | Section 3 of this specification |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------------+
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RFC 7238 HTTP Status Code 308 June 2014
7. Acknowledgements
The definition for the new status code 308 reuses text from the
HTTP/1.1 definitions of status codes 301 and 307.
Furthermore, thanks to Ben Campbell, Cyrus Daboo, Eran Hammer-Lahav,
Bjoern Hoehrmann, Subramanian Moonesamy, Peter Saint-Andre, and
Robert Sparks for feedback on this document.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC 3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, January 2005.
[RFC 7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
RFC 7230, June 2014.
[RFC 7231] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content", RFC 7231,
June 2014.
[RFC 7234] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching",
RFC 7234, June 2014.
8.2. Informative References
[HTML] Raggett, D., Le Hors, A., and I. Jacobs, "HTML 4.01
Specification", W3C Recommendation REC-html401-19991224,
December 1999,
<http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224>.
Latest version available at
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html401>.
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RFC 7238 HTTP Status Code 308 June 2014
Author's Address
Julian F. Reschke
greenbytes GmbH
Hafenweg 16
Muenster, NW 48155
Germany
EMail: julian.reschke@greenbytes.de
URI: http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/
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RFC TOTAL SIZE: 10623 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Saturday, June 7th, 2014
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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