HTTP HEAD Verb
- HEAD - request the same headers as GET without a response body
- HEAD is useful for checking whether a resource exists, checking caching headers, or validating metadata without transferring the representation
- A HEAD response should not include a body
HEAD is like asking "what would the headers look like if I sent a GET request here?"
The server should send the same response headers that it would send for GET, but without sending the response body.
This can be useful when we want to check whether a resource exists, inspect caching headers, check content type, or avoid downloading a large body.
For testing, HEAD is useful because some APIs accidentally route it differently from GET, or accidentally return a body when they should not.
HTTP HEAD Verb Example
curl -I https://apichallenges.com/todos
HEAD https://apichallenges.com/todos HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/8.0.0
Host: localhost:4567
Accept: */*
Common HTTP Status codes in response to a HEAD
- 200 - OK, the resource exists
- 204 - OK, no content
- 404 - resource not found
- 405 - method not allowed for this endpoint