[New-bugs-announce] [issue33181] SimpleHTTPRequestHandler shouldn't redirect to directories with code 301

[Oliver Urs Lenz]

New submission from Oliver Urs Lenz <oliver.urs.lenz at gmail.com>:

SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.send_head() has this bit:

        if os.path.isdir(path):
            parts = urllib.parse.urlsplit(self.path)
            if not parts.path.endswith('/'):
                # redirect browser - doing basically what apache does
                self.send_response(HTTPStatus.MOVED_PERMANENTLY)

https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/521995205a2cb6b504fe0e39af22a81f785350a3/Lib/http/server.py#L676

I think there are two issues here:
1) why should the server return a redirect code here, and not (in the code that immediately follows) when it serves an index file?
2) code 301 (permanent redirect) is really unforgiving, browsers like Firefox and Chrome will permanently cache the redirect, making it essentially impossible to undo if you do not control the client, and not trivial even if you do. This will probably not change on the browser-side, general opinion seems to be that limited caching should either be specified in the response header or that a different redirect code should be sent back.
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2017OctDec/thread.html#msg363

Therefore I would like to propose that preferably,
- no redirect code be sent back, or else that
- a different redirect code be sent back, or else that
- no-caching or a time limit be added to the header

(This may require that send_head check for index files instead)

----------
components: Library (Lib)
messages: 314663
nosy: oulenz
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: SimpleHTTPRequestHandler shouldn't redirect to directories with code 301
versions: Python 3.6

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue33181>
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