Re: No-Vary-Search

[Watson Ladd <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2024 at 3:47 PM Rory Hewitt <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> <bikeshedding>
>
> Well I'm basing my "it's about caching" argument on both the RFC draft itself and also the excellent explainer at https://github.com/WICG/nav-speculation/blob/main/no-vary-search.md which is explicitly all about caching :)
>
> I think we (and others?) agree that "search" isn't a good name segment due to its multiple meanings. Personally, I think using the "no-" prefix isn't necessarily helpful, since this header can be used to specify what should and should not be part of the cache key. So my preference would be for it to be "Vary-Cache" or "Vary-Params" or "Cache-Params".
>
> </bikeshedding>

Except that Vary works the other way, and Cache-Params would be params
we send to the cache. So No-Vary-URL-Params is I think a better name
than all of those.
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2024 at 3:34 PM David Benjamin <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> <bikeshed>
>> I think No-Vary-Cache is a worse header name than No-Vary-Search. It says nothing about the URL query/search field and could just as easily describe the HTTP request headers or other things that the response doesn't vary on. That means it should include something that indicates the URL query/search field.
>>
>> As for the Cache part, it's not really a statement about the cache anyway. It's a statement about whether the response to this request varies on some property. The cache is just the primary reason for the client to care about this information. So, matching the precedent with the Vary header, I think "Vary" is enough to capture this aspect of the name without adding "Cache".
>>
>> I agree the combination of the two is awkward. It's unfortunate that "search" is a bit overloaded of a term, and everywhere is inconsistent about whether it's the "query" or the "search", but removing any reference to the field at all is even worse. (Tossing out an idea without opinion, No-Vary-(Search|Query|URL)-Params? It's really the individual params being targeted and not the overall search/query string.)
>> </bikeshed>



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