HTTP Client Attributes

[Tom Scavo]

On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 12:55 PM, Brent Putman <putmanb at georgetown.edu> wrote:
>
> On 5/3/18 12:33 PM, Tom Scavo wrote:
>>
>> Until just
>> now, I thought the HTTP cache attributes (httpCaching,
>> httpCacheDirectory, httpMaxCacheEntries, httpMaxCacheEntrySize)
>> completely controlled the caching behavior.
>
> They do, for *HTTP* caching.  That's literally what they are.  The
> providers don't do "real" *HTTP* caching themselves. They store and use
> the ETag and Last-Modified for conditional GETs, that's all.

Caching the HTTP response headers is "HTTP caching" by my definition.
In any case, to avoid further confusion, we should clarify the docs. I
will do that eventually if you don't beat me to it.

Based on everything I've read and heard so far, here is what I think
is going on:

- By default, the HTTP metadata providers perform HTTP conditional GET
but they do not cache the response body, and moreover, the cached HTTP
headers do not survive a restart.

- To cache the full HTTP response (including the response body) set
the httpCaching attribute to either “file” or “memory”.

- The full HTTP response will survive a restart if (and only if)
httpCaching=”file”.

Please correct me if I'm still off base.

Thanks,

Tom