Daren Matthews

HTTP and ETag

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With caching enabled, a web server does not need to send a full response if content has not changed.

• If-Modified-Since is an HTTP request header that the client sends to your browser along with a request for content.
• Last-Modified is an HTTP response header that the server returns along with the requested content.

If-Modified-Since Allows a 304 Not Modified to be returned if content is unchanged
If-Modified-Since: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 19:43:31 GMT

If-None-Match Allows a 304 Not Modified to be returned if content is unchanged,
If-None-Match: "737060cd8c082f209582d"

The HTTP ETag

An ETag or The Entity Tag (Etag) assists web cache validation, allowing a client to make conditional requests. ETags are similar to fingerprints, and they can be quickly compared to determine if two versions of a resource are the same or not.

ETags can use both strong and weak validation, distinguished by the presence of an initial “W/” in the ETag identifier:

“123456789” — A strong ETag validator
W/”123456789″ — A weak ETag validator

Strongly validated ETags ensure content is byte-for-byte identical, as well as all other entity fields (such as Content-Language) remain unchanged. (Strong ETags permit the caching and reassembly of partial responses, as with byte-range requests).

Weakly validatind ETags claim that the resources at the URL are semantically equivalent; meaning that for practical purposes they are interchangeable and that cached copies can be used. However the resources are not necessarily byte-for-byte identical.

THUS:

• Weak ETags are not suitable for byte-range requests.
• Weak ETags may be useful for cases in which strong ETags are impractical for a web server to generate, such as with dynamically-generated content.