HEAD

The HTTP HEAD method requests the headers that would be returned if the HEAD request's URL was instead requested with the HTTP GET method. For example, if a URL might produce a large download, a HEAD request could read its Content-Length header to check the filesize without actually downloading the file.

Warning: A response to a HEAD method should not have a body. If it has one anyway, that body must be ignored: any representation headers that might describe the erroneous body are instead assumed to describe the response which a similar GET request would have received.

If the response to a HEAD request shows that a cached URL response is now outdated, the cached copy is invalidated even if no GET request was made.

Request has body No
Successful response has body No
Safe Yes
Idempotent Yes
Cacheable Yes
Allowed in HTML forms No

Syntax

HEAD /index.html

Specifications

Specification
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content
# HEAD

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also