Req #73377 [Com]: Verbose caching instructions by default.

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=73377&edit=1 ID: 73377 Comment by: inforbano at gmail dot com Reported by: inforbano at gmail dot com Summary: Verbose caching instructions by default. Status: Open Type: Feature/Change Request Package: PHP options/info functions PHP Version: Irrelevant Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: "[...]" in your citation is "without a clock". Have you seen many servers with PHP engine and without a clock? Anyway, this combination is not typical. A typical server with PHP has clock. And it automatically generates the Date: header with current time. The Expires: header with time in the past in this situation is spec violation. The issue is actual, in particular, because it is unclear, how web-crawlers should treat this situation. Formally, they can treat it as "the page contains outdated content". Therefore, rating of the page can be suppressed. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2016-10-24 16:47:09] bwoebi@php.net You are misreading the RFC, and even RFC 7234 states it's allowed: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-5.3 > An origin server [...] MUST NOT generate an Expires field unless its value represents a fixed time in the past (always expired) which is exactly what we want. … Regarding the issue, I doubt it's an actual issue, but I leave that to other people to determine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2016-10-23 10:48:41] inforbano at gmail dot com What is even worse, according to RFC-2616 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.21 date in Expires: can not be in the past. So, here PHP just violates web-standards. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2016-10-23 10:38:38] inforbano at gmail dot com Description: ------------ When function session_start(); is used with default options, PHP generates headers like this: Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache This verbose behavior is wrong for the following reasons. Most PHP-programmers do not need to know anything about caching. Therefore user agents (browsers, proxies, robots...) MUST have rational behavior (with respect to caching) without any special instructions from the server. This is only problem of user agents to understand cookies and to automatically adjust their caching behavior according to their needs. On the other hand, some meticulous PHP-programmers investigate HTTP-headers of their sites to be sure that everything is fine. And in this case they just waste their time to study problems, that are not their. Test script: --------------- <?php session_start(); Expected result: ---------------- No special headers for caching by default. This is like session_cache_limiter(''); is set by default. Actual result: -------------- Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=73377&edit=1