RSS and HTTP cache protocole

[zegzav]

Hello,

To reduce data exchange for the clients and the RSS servers, uTorrent could handle the HTTP cache protocole if the RSS server supports it :

- Send the appropriate HTTP header fields "If-Modified-Since" and "If-None-Match" if the server previously respond with fields "Last-Modified" and/or "ETag".

- Handle the 304 (Not Modified) HTTP response

Thanks.

[thelittlefire]

RSS follows <ttl> in the feed.

[zegzav]

1. The ttl is an optional tag in the RSS spec.

2. The ttl or rss.update_interval timeout doesn't mean the feed really changed on the server. The local rss could be still valid. This can save bandwidth and could be more server friendly.

[thelittlefire]

Makes sense to me. But I'm not sure how much logic they plan to put into RSS. It's not a feed reader, it just processes feeds with torrent links. Good luck.

[Ultima]

Well, it doesn't need to be a full-fledged RSS feed reader to support a simple, non-RSS-reader-specific behavior like this. I wouldn't imagine the logic being too much more difficult.

[zegzav]

Here an article about HTTP conditional request:

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2002/10/21/http_conditional_get_for_rss_hackers/

This is not a "rss-reader-specific behavior" but a standard HTTP optimization for pages accessed frequently.

The implementation on client-side is really simple. Save the tags Etag and/or Last-Modified from the HTTP response. Add the tags If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since to the next requests. Check the response is 304 or not.