2. Validators

This specification defines two forms of metadata that are commonly used to observe resource state and test for preconditions: modification dates (Section 2.2) and opaque entity tags (Section 2.3). Additional metadata that reflects resource state has been defined by various extensions of HTTP, such as Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV, [RFC4918]), that are beyond the scope of this specification. A resource metadata value is referred to as a "validator" when it is used within a precondition.

2.1. Weak versus Strong

Validators come in two flavors: strong or weak. Weak validators are easy to generate but are far less useful for comparisons. Strong validators are ideal for comparisons but can be very difficult (and occasionally impossible) to generate efficiently. Rather than impose that all forms of resource adhere to the same strength of validator, HTTP exposes the type of validator in use and imposes restrictions on when weak validators can be used as preconditions.

A "strong validator" is representation metadata that changes value whenever a change occurs to the representation data that would be observable in the payload body of a 200 (OK) response to GET.

A strong validator might change for reasons other than a change to the representation data, such as when a semantically significant part of the representation metadata is changed (e.g., Content-Type), but it is in the best interests of the origin server to only change the value when it is necessary to invalidate the stored responses held by remote caches and authoring tools.

Cache entries might persist for arbitrarily long periods, regardless of expiration times. Thus, a cache might attempt to validate an entry using a validator that it obtained in the distant past. A strong validator is unique across all versions of all representations associated with a particular resource over time. However, there is no implication of uniqueness across representations of different resources (i.e., the same strong validator might be in use for representations of multiple resources at the same time and does not imply that those representations are equivalent).

In contrast, a "weak validator" is representation metadata that might not change for every change to the representation data. This weakness might be due to limitations in how the value is calculated, such as clock resolution, an inability to ensure uniqueness for all possible representations of the resource, or a desire of the resource owner to group representations by some self-determined set of equivalency rather than unique sequences of data. An origin server SHOULD change a weak entity-tag whenever it considers prior representations to be unacceptable as a substitute for the current representation. In other words, a weak entity-tag ought to change whenever the origin server wants caches to invalidate old responses.

Strong validators are usable for all conditional requests, including cache validation, partial content ranges, and "lost update" avoidance. Weak validators are only usable when the client does not require exact equality with previously obtained representation data, such as when validating a cache entry or limiting a web traversal to recent changes.

2.2. Last-Modified

The Last-Modified header field in a response provides a timestamp indicating the date and time at which the origin server believes the selected representation was last modified, as determined at the conclusion of handling the request.

Last-Modified = HTTP-date

An example of its use is:

Last-Modified: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 12:45:26 GMT

2.2.1. Generation

An origin server SHOULD send Last-Modified for any selected representation for which a last modification date can be reasonably and consistently determined, since its use in conditional requests and evaluating cache freshness ([RFC7234]) results in a substantial reduction of HTTP traffic on the Internet and can be a significant factor in improving service scalability and reliability.

An origin server SHOULD obtain the Last-Modified value of the representation as close as possible to the time that it generates the Date field value for its response. This allows a recipient to make an accurate assessment of the representation's modification time, especially if the representation changes near the time that the response is generated.

An origin server with a clock MUST NOT send a Last-Modified date that is later than the server's time of message origination (Date). If the last modification time is derived from implementation-specific metadata that evaluates to some time in the future, according to the origin server's clock, then the origin server MUST replace that value with the message origination date. This prevents a future modification date from having an adverse impact on cache validation.

2.2.2. Comparison

A Last-Modified time, when used as a validator in a request, is implicitly weak unless it is possible to deduce that it is strong, using specific rules defined in the specification.

2.3. ETag

The ETag header field in a response provides the current entity-tag for the selected representation, as determined at the conclusion of handling the request. An entity-tag is an opaque validator for differentiating between multiple representations of the same resource, regardless of whether those multiple representations are due to resource state changes over time, content negotiation resulting in multiple representations being valid at the same time, or both.

ETag = entity-tag

entity-tag = [ weak ] opaque-tag
weak = %x57.2F ; "W/", case-sensitive
opaque-tag = DQUOTE *etagc DQUOTE
etagc = %x21 / %x23-7E / obs-text

Examples:

ETag: "xyzzy"
ETag: W/"xyzzy"
ETag: ""

An entity-tag can be either a weak or strong validator, with strong being the default. If an origin server provides an entity-tag for a representation and the generation of that entity-tag does not satisfy all of the characteristics of a strong validator (Section 2.1), then the origin server MUST mark the entity-tag as weak by prefixing its opaque value with W/ (case-sensitive).

2.3.1. Generation

The principle behind entity-tags is that only the service author knows the implementation of a resource well enough to select the most accurate and efficient validation mechanism for that resource, and that any such mechanism can be mapped to a simple sequence of octets for easy comparison. Since the value is opaque, there is no need for the client to be aware of how each entity-tag is constructed.

An origin server SHOULD send an ETag for any selected representation for which detection of changes can be reasonably and consistently determined, since the entity-tag's use in conditional requests and evaluating cache freshness ([RFC7234]) can result in a substantial reduction of HTTP network traffic and can be a significant factor in improving service scalability and reliability.

2.3.2. Comparison

There are two entity-tag comparison functions, depending on whether or not the comparison context allows the use of weak validators:

• Strong comparison: two entity-tags are equivalent if both are not weak and their opaque-tags match character-by-character.
• Weak comparison: two entity-tags are equivalent if their opaque-tags match character-by-character, regardless of either or both being tagged as "weak".

The example below shows the results for a set of entity-tag pairs:

ETag 1	ETag 2	Strong Comparison	Weak Comparison
W/"1"	W/"1"	no match	match
W/"1"	W/"2"	no match	no match
W/"1"	"1"	no match	match
"1"	"1"	match	match

2.4. When to Use Entity-Tags and Last-Modified Dates

In 200 (OK) responses to GET or HEAD, an origin server:

• SHOULD send an entity-tag validator unless it is not feasible to generate one.
• MAY send a weak entity-tag instead of a strong entity-tag, if performance considerations support the use of weak entity-tags, or if it is unfeasible to send a strong entity-tag.
• SHOULD send a Last-Modified value if it is feasible to send one.

In other words, the preferred behavior for an origin server is to send both a strong entity-tag and a Last-Modified value in successful responses to a retrieval request.

A client:

• MUST send that entity-tag in any cache validation request (using If-Match or If-None-Match) if an entity-tag has been provided by the origin server.
• SHOULD send the Last-Modified value in non-subrange cache validation requests (using If-Modified-Since) if only a Last-Modified value has been provided by the origin server.
• SHOULD send both validators in cache validation requests if both an entity-tag and a Last-Modified value have been provided by the origin server. This allows both HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 caches to respond appropriately.