Fragments allowed in Location

[mnot@…]

In the description of the Location header [section 14.30], the ABNF for the Location header is given as:

    Location       = "Location" ":" absoluteURI

This and the accompanying text are incorrect because the definition of 'absoluteURI', given in RFC 2396 does not include fragment identifiers. The correct syntax for the Location header is:

    Location       = "Location" ":" absoluteURI [ "#" fragment ]

There are circumstances in which a fragment identifier in a Location URL would not be appropriate:

• With a 201 Created response, because in this usage the Location header specifies the URL for the entire created resource.
• With a 300 Multiple Choices, since the choice decision is intended to be made on resource characteristics and not fragment characteristics.
• With 305 Use Proxy.

At present, the behavior in the case where there was a fragment with the original URI, e.g.: http://host1.example.com/resource1#fragment1 where /resource1 redirects to http://host2.example.com/resource2#fragment2 is 'fragment1' discarded? Do you find fragment2 and then find fragment1 within it? We don't have fragment combination rules.

[fielding@…]

Fixed in [73]

[julian.reschke@…]

This fix is not complete, see <​http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-lafon-rfc2616bis-01.html#rfc.change.location-fragments.2>.