Apache patch B18 (redirect)

First appears in Apache 0.3

Date:

March '95 ish

Documentation:

Technical discussion. No additional documentation supplied or required

Purpose

To fix problems with script generated redirects;

• Redirects under NCSA httpd 1.3 are extremely inefficient since each results in
  i. a call to die(REDIRECT) - even though passing just script output to the client would often suffice.
  ii. external redirects required the script producing the redirect to be killed, but the kill had to be performed after a signal was sent to ask it to stop. Scripts were given 3 seconds to stop, then they were ruthlessly killed. This happened even when the script had long since terminated successfully.
  
  
• When a script requesting a redirect produced some HTML body to go with the HTTP headers, NCSA 1.3 ignored it. So one couldn't send back customized redirect instructions for use by less sophisticated clients.
  
  
• NCSA httpd 1.3 would, ignore a Status: 302 line produced by a script, and would only look for a header starting with Location: - hence 1.3 would send back its own status message instead of the one asked for by the script.
  a harmless problem, but annoying if you want to send a specific message.
  
  

New behavior

• Scripts producing a Status: line, will have the status message passed on unmolested by apache.
  
  
• Scripts producing a HTML body as well as HTTP headers, will have the body passed on to the client, unmolested by apache.
  
  
• Scripts will always be allowed to run to completion. There's no kill and no 3 second wait.
  
  

Consequences

Redirects are faster and more configurable.

See Also

Custom error responses (via redirects)