5.11  HTTP Status Code 302

HTTP Status Code 302 should be returned by a website when there has been a temporary redirect that should not be used permanently.  For example, you may have a bookmark to the Hooterville News newspaper with the url

    http://www.hootervillenews.com/todaysHeadlines

This URL takes you to today’s headlines.  However, you won’t get there directly.  In response, today, their server will send back a response with HTTP Status Code 302, including a redirect to the url:

    http://www.hootervillenews.com/headlines/2009_07_16

which will give you the headlines for today, July 16.  Your browser then visits this redirect URL and renders its data instead of the URL you asked for.

Now. if you click on that same bookmark tomorrow, you will again get a 302 response but will be redirected to a different url:

    http://www.hootervillenews.com/headlines/2009_07_17

which will give you the headlines for tomorrow, July 17.

This example illustrates the correct usage of the 302 status code by the Hooterville News.

Note that, in this case, you would not want to update your bookmark to point to the redirected url, because if you did, you would be reading July 16’s headlines forever.