conditional requests

[Prasad Katti]

Hi All,

I was thinking about using conditional requests on the REST APS. so essentially I will make use of the ETAG or if-none-match header to send a 304 or 200 status code. this has a better chance of working if the end client is a browser that operates out of a built in cache. however, if the calling client is another application, then it has to maintain the ETAG related to the resource to make this work. my question is

1. is this really practical? if so only when the calling client is a browser?

2. how can this be implemented with non-browser clients optimally?

Regards,

Prasad