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Re: Indicating a resource does not exist

Robert Sanderson <azaroth42@gmail.com> Thu, 20 January 2011 15:45 UTC

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Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:33:39 -0700
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From: Robert Sanderson <azaroth42@gmail.com>
To: Tim Williams <williamstw@gmail.com>
Cc: nathan@webr3.org, Joe Gregorio <joe@bitworking.org>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
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Subject: Re: Indicating a resource does not exist
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Resent-Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:47:32 +0000

Which is surely all that the server can say?  The resource might exist in
the future. It may have existed in the past, but when in the past? Certainly
not before 1994...

A server that supported Memento [1] might be able to say that it *didn't*
exist at a particular time, but that's not the same as "doesn't,didn't and
never will exist".

Given the lack of the time dimension in HTTP without Memento, 404 seems the
correct status code.

Rob Sanderson
Los Alamos National Laboratory

1: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-vandesompel-memento/


On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 8:19 AM, Tim Williams <williamstw@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote:
> > Joe Gregorio wrote:
> >> What's wrong with 404 Not Found?
>
> > The best you can conclude from that is "don't know" the state of the
> > resource, or if there is one.
>
> It's not clear why you think that's all you can conclude.  I would
> have concluded that the origin server couldn't find a resource by that
> identifier at the time of the request. Maybe I'm not understanding the
> nuance of "doesn't exist" vs. "not found".  404 is saying it doesn't
> exist *at the time of this request*, right?
>
> --tim
>
>

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