CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perlhttp-redirectcgi
hashtagjet
hashtagjet

Reputation: 141

General information about CGI redirections

When I run my redirect cgi script (Perl), I just do the following:

print "Location: /new/url\n\n";

This works, but by default, it says Status:200 OK. If I specify the status like 302 or 301 in the header, then the browser redirects. Otherwise, it still loads the content of the new url without changing the URL in a browser.

I would just like to understand how a browser processes a Location: Header but has 200 status and what are pros and cons of doing this instead of using 302 or 301?

Either a feedback or a link to an article discussing this would be great. Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 435

Answers (2)

Dave Cross
Dave Cross

Reputation: 69284

Make your life easier by using the redirect() subroutine from CGI.pm.

$ perl -MCGI=redirect -E'say redirect("https://example.com")'
Status: 302 Found
Location: https://example.com

Upvotes: 1

Steffen Ullrich
Steffen Ullrich

Reputation: 123380

I would just like to understand how a browser processes a Location: Header but has 200 status and what are pros and cons of doing this instead of using 302 or 301?

A Location header causes only a redirect when combined with some 3xx code. This behavior is clearly defined in the HTTP standard. From RFC 7231 7.1.2 Location:

For 201 (Created) responses, the Location value refers to the primary resource created by the request. For 3xx (Redirection) responses, the Location value refers to the preferred target resource for automatically redirecting the request.

In other words: it makes no sense at all to use a Location header together with a response code 200. The Location header will simply be ignored by the browser in this case.

Upvotes: 3

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