Sending info with a HTTP redirect that the browser should send to the redirected location?

http http-headers http-redirect
meandmycode picture meandmycode · Jun 7, 2009 · Viewed 10.8k times · Source

Is this possible.. for example, imagine I respond to a request with a 302 (or 303), and I inform the browser to do a request to a given location.. is there a header that I can send with the HTTP 302, so that the subsequent request from the browser would include that header?

I know I could do this with the location header, as in redirect and specify the information in the url as a query string.. but I'm wondering if there is a better way.. it seems that it should be a legit scenario..

'Content has moved, go here .. oh and you'll want to take this with you to give to the redirect location'

I'm guessing a big fat no!

Thanks in advance.

Edit

The reason for this is in respect to PRG patterns, where you have a GET url and POST url, given that you post data and it isn't acceptable, the server redirects you to the GET, and does some 'magic' in order to 'send data' to that GET, using most often session state to store a variable.

However this can breakdown in scenarios where many of these PRG requests are happening, granted this isn't a common scenario and generally nobody need worry about this.. but if you do- you'll need a way to identify the requests, this can be done with query string parameters send in the 302.. so that a specific entry can be put in session state according to that request.

The question was regarding trying to remove the 'request key' from the url, and making it more implicit.. cookies 'appear' to work, but they only make the window for screw ups smaller.

It would be great to say when you go the 'location' i've specified, send these parameters.

Edit

Just to note, I'm not trying to get the browser to send arbitrary headers to the location, but if there is ANY headers designed to hint the context of the request (like the querystring parameters could).

Answer

tvanfosson picture tvanfosson · Jun 7, 2009

A redirect response itself doesn't contain any data. You can redirect using a URL with query parameters, but the new "location" will need to know how to consume those parameters.

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