Thanks for the answer. We are currently developing a new REST API for our proprietary CMS and it will have support for HEAD requests, this is, as you mentioned, the server wont process the full request as if it was a GET but return a different response instead.
Since we use MooTools a lot for our front end development, it would be nice to have a support for this. On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Sanford Whiteman <[email protected]> wrote: >> The Request class can handle GET, POST, PUT and DELETE HTTP >> requests, but I haven't seen anything regarding HEAD requests. These >> can be easily done with curl or Python, for example. Any ideas of >> how to implement HEAD requests with ajax and MooTools? > > I think some changes are necessary in core; I haven't looked at the > source but method: 'HEAD' seems to be swallowed and turned into a > POST. > > IMO, HEAD is overrated. It may explicitly conserve bytes on the wire > but doesn't necessarily conserve processing on the server unless you > specifically code for it. > > For example, you can stick with GET and add a custom header like > x-http-method: HEAD, then have the server-side code intelligently > short-circuit processing and just send the response headers and > exit... that's more efficient than a dumb HEAD, where the server > executes all the server-side code and then the SAPI layer blindly > truncates the response. > > -- S. > > -- Eneko Alonso Software Engineer http://enekoalonso.com San Luis Obispo, California
