> I just looked through the NCSA httpd source code and found
> no way to specify an Expires: header for a file. If this
> was a CGI script, I know I could add one myself, but how
> do I tell the server to send an Expires: header for an
> ordinary HTML or GIF file?
>
> I realize this is getting off track, but it'd be nice to
> be able to specify HTTP headers for random files. For the
> Unix environment, perhaps file `foo.html' could have an
> associated `foo.html.hdr' file that the HTTP server knows
> to look for, and adds any headers found there (like Expires).
> This would also be a solution to the problem of moved files
> -- if I rename `foo.html' to `bar.html', then `foo.html.hdr'
> could contain `Location: bar.html' (is that right?), without
> having to modify httpd's config file.
Yep. See <http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/MOMspider/WWW94/meta.html>
for a discussion of these issues. The servers do not support it yet,
but you could always hack a server to make it work. Eventually,
someone will implement visible metainformation.
....Roy Fielding ICS Grad Student, University of California, Irvine USA
(fielding@ics.uci.edu)
<A HREF="http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/grad/Software/fielding">About Roy</A>