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Redirecting 404 #21

Closed annevk closed 2 years ago

annevk commented 4 years ago

Has there ever been discussion for a status code that means "this URL does not exist, but let me redirect you to a URL that does and might help you"?

Especially for URLs that are meant to be human-readable this would be really helpful. Or if you want to help the user by eliding punctuation that might have ended up at the end of a URL due to bad auto-linking. (And in practice I've seen this implemented with a 3xx status code and I suppose 301 kinda fits the bill, but it's a little strange?)

(This also applies a bit to 410 and maybe other 4xx status codes.)

(Sorry if this is the wrong place.)

reschke commented 4 years ago

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6596 maybe?

annevk commented 4 years ago

So say /) is wrong, but not wrong enough that you don't want to map it / to be helpful. Would the response be:

301 BLAH
Link: </>;rel=canonical
Location: /

? (Please forgive any errors in the Link header syntax, I did not look it up.)

reschke commented 4 years ago

I haven't thought about that :-) I'd say Link/rel=canonical with 200 should be sufficient for the client to understand what's going on.

annevk commented 4 years ago

And use HTML and <meta http-equiv=refresh> for the redirect you also want to make happen? (I think what happens in practice is that folks (ab)use redirects, as that gives a better experience for end users.)

mnot commented 2 years ago

Closing as this seems to have concluded. Anne, if you have a concrete proposal or more data, please come back. You might get a broader response if you ask on the mailing list (yes, I know...).

Cheers