HTTP

Persistence · Compression · HTTP Secure

Headers

ETag · Cookie · Referrer · Location

Status codes

301 Moved permanently

302 Found

303 See Other

403 Forbidden

404 Not Found

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The HTTP Location header is used to force a web browser to load a different web page. It is passed as part of the Server Response by a web server when the requested URL has:

• Moved temporarily
• Moved permanently, or
• A new resource has been created

The HTTP Location header should be sent with a HTTP Response Code of 3xx.

While the internet standard RFC 1945 (HTTP 1.0) requires a complete absolute URI for redirection^[1][2], the most popular web browsers support the passing of a Relative URL as the value for a Location: header.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Example 2 Relative URL Example 3 Notes 4 References 5 See also

[edit] Example

The internet standard requires an absoluteURI token to follow a Location: header, which means it must contain a scheme^[3] (e.g., http:, https:, telnet:, mailto:)^[4] and conforms to scheme-specific syntax and semantics. For example, the HTTP scheme-specific syntax and semantics for HTTP URLs requires a "host" (web server address) and "absolute path", with optional components of "port" and "query". In the case that there is no absolute path present, it must be given as "/" when used as a Request-URI for a resource.^[5]

Client request:

 GET /index.html HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com 

Server response:

 HTTP/1.1 302 Found Location: http://www.wikipedia.org/index.php 

[edit] Relative URL Example

This example, while incorrect based on the internet standard^[6], works in all popular browsers.^{[citation needed]}

Client request:

 GET /blog HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com 

Server response:

 HTTP/1.1 302 Found Location: /blog/ 

[edit] Notes

Not to be confused with JavaScript location variable.

[edit] References

1. ^ RFC 2616 (HTTP 1.1)
2. ^ RFC 1945 (HTTP 1.0)
3. ^ http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3305.txt
4. ^ http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes.html
5. ^ http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html#sec3.2.2
6. ^ http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.30

[edit] See also

• Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• List of HTTP status codes
• List of HTTP headers
• URL redirection using server-side scripting for redirection