Redirected HTTP Requests

In some cases, a web server is configured to redirect requests for a particular URL to a different location. For example, if a company's home page is moved to a new location, requests for the old URL may be directed to the new URL.

To save valuable, over-the-air time, you can configure Good Intranet Server to handle redirection responses.

When a web server makes a redirection response, it sends a message with an HTTP response code of 301 or 302 (the location of the requested web page has changed, either permanently or temporarily) and the URL of the new location. The recipient of the redirection response can then send an HTTP request for the new URL.

You can configure Good Intranet Server to handle redirection responses (the default) or you can configure the server to return an HTTP response to the handheld that made the initial request, so that the handheld can send a new HTTP request with the new URL.

Setting Good Intranet Server to directly handle redirection responses reduces the time that would otherwise be spent in sending the web server's response to the user handheld and followed by the user handheld returning its response to Good Intranet Server.

When Good Intranet Server is configured to handle redirection responses, each time it receives a redirection response from a web server, it creates an HTTP request that uses the URL for the changed location and sends the request back to the web server. When the web server responds, Good Intranet Server returns the response to the browser. An exception to this sequence is when the web server sends a redirection response and a Set-Cookie header and cookie handling is disabled on the server. In this case, to make sure the browser receives the cookie, Good Intranet Server sends the web server's response directly to the browser.

When you enable Good Intranet Server to handle redirection responses, you can also configure it to limit the number of consecutive redirection responses it allows per response. This prevents the possibility of getting stuck in a redirection loop, which can occur if a series of redirection responses leads back to the original URL. For example:

URL A > URL B > URL C > URL A

If Good Intranet Server is set to allow only five redirection responses in a row, the loop in the example is followed once and then broken off before it gets to URL C the second time.

To set a limit on the number of consecutive redirection requests, you use the configuration property redirect.max.

The following table lists the properties for configuring Good Intranet Server to handle redirection responses:

Property Name	Default	Description
redirect.enable	true	If set to true, enables the server to handle redirection responses. If false, redirection responses are handled by the browser.
redirect.max	5	Maximum number of consecutive redirections allowed per request.
redirect.log.enable	false	If true, enables the server to log its redirection requests.