Re: Re: limiting access

On 7 Jan 2005, at 10:32, ecomputerd wrote:

> Technically, I don't think you need the "If-Match HEAD", you can use a
> GET. But the idea is the same.
> 
> In the RSS aggregator check lists, the specific techniques of using
> the Last-Modified and the ETag headers I've seen referred to as
> "Conditional GET". I would expect that the combination of these
> headers with the Syndication module will get you the best control.
> Both of course require the cooperation of the aggregator.
> 
> The Expires and max-age would probably be considered hints to any Web
> cache mechanism between your server and the aggregator, but not to the
> aggregator itself.
> 
> At least that's how I view it in the aggregator I wrote.

Yes, fair enough. Using conditionals in HEAD requests is 
unnecessarily conservative if you expect and want to download the 
latest. It would be less efficient to make two requests. The 
potential saving on the content body is not significant unless you're 
checking thousands of feeds which are not updated as often as they 
claim to be!

The Cacheability Engine is a handy place to check the performance of 
news feeds.

http://www.mnot.net/cacheability/


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