VenomVendor
VenomVendor

Reputation: 15432

How does "304 Not Modified" work exactly?

My guess, if it's generated by the browser:

function is_modified()
{
    return get_data_from_cache() === get_data_from_url();
}

function get_data_from_cache()
{
    return some_hash_or_xxx_function(cache_data);
}

function get_data_from_url()
{
     return some_hash_or_xxx_function(new_data);
}

function some_hash_or_xxx_function(data)
{
     // Do something with the data.
     // What is that algorithm?
     return result;
}

console.log(is_modified());

I am relying on a third party API provider to get data, parse & push it to my database. The data may or may not change during every request, but the header always sends 200. I do not want to parse, check the last Unique ID in DB and so on... to determine the change in data, nor compare the result directly rather I md5(), sha1() and crc32() hashed the result and works fine, but I'm wondering about the algorithm to determine 304.

I want to use the same kind of algorithm to determine the change in my data.

Upvotes: 194

Views: 176550

Answers (2)

SLaks
SLaks

Reputation: 888203

When the browser puts something in its cache, it also stores the Last-Modified or ETag header from the server.

The browser then sends a request with the If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match header, telling the server to send a 304 if the content still has that date or ETag.

The server needs some way of calculating a date-modified or ETag for each version of each resource; this typically comes from the filesystem or a separate database column.

Upvotes: 222

宏杰李
宏杰李

Reputation: 12168

Last-Modified : The last modified date for the requested object

If-Modified-Since : Allows a 304 Not Modified to be returned if last modified date is unchanged.

ETag : An ETag is an opaque identifier assigned by a web server to a specific version of a resource found at a URL. If the resource representation at that URL ever changes, a new and different ETag is assigned.

If-None-Match : Allows a 304 Not Modified to be returned if ETag is unchanged.

the browser store cache with a date(Last-Modified) or id(ETag), when you need to request the URL again, the browser send request message with the header:

enter image description here

the server will return 304 when the if statement is False, and browser will use cache.

Upvotes: 24

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