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Tim Bray wrote:
> On Mar 5, 2004, at 6:19 PM, K. Ari Krupnikov wrote:
>
>> What status should a server return for a request such as
>>
>> http://example.com/catalog?product=0001
>>
>> if the resource that identifies the catalog (example.com/catalog) is
>> available but cannot find the product identified in the query string?
>>
>> The question boils down to whether an HTTP URI is opaque or if the
>> question mark has predefined semantics. (The specs would have me
>> believe the former, but the practice seems to be the latter).
>
>
> 404. The URI is opaque. There is no such resource. -Tim
I don't think so. Rfc 2396 says
"The query component is a string of information to be interpreted by
the resource."
This shows that the query string is not actually part of the resource
specification.
In this case, there _is_ a resource, but there is nothing to return
about the view (or whatever) of the resource indicated by the query string.
I think a better return would be a 204 -
204 No Content
An HTML or XML document saying there was no result and why would also
seem to be OK, but 204 ought to be better.
Cheers,
Tom P
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