Revision 1105503 of Location

<div>{{HTTPSidebar}}</div>

<p>The <strong><code>Location</code></strong> response header indicates what is the URL to redirect a page too. It has only a meaning when serverd in a <code>3xx</code> answer.</p>

<p>The HTTP method used to make the new request to fetch the page pointed to by <code>Location</code> depends of the original method and of the kind of redirection. If {{HTTPStatus("303")}} <code>See Also</code> responses always lead to the use of a {{HTTPMethod("GET")}} method, {{HTTPStatus("307")}} <code>Temporary Redirect</code> and {{HTTPStatus("308")}} <code>Permanent Redirect</code> don't change the method used in the original request; {{HTTPStatus("301")}} <code>Permanently Redirect</code> and {{HTTPStatus("302")}} <code>Found</code> doesn't change the method most of the time, though older user-agent may (so you basically don't know). All responss with one of these status code send a <code>Location</code> header.</p>

<p>Beside redirect response, messages with {{HTTPHeader("201")}} <code>Created</code> status also include the <code>Location</code> header. It indicates the URL to the newly created resource.</p>

<p><code>Location</code> and {{HTTPHeader("Content-Location")}} are different: <code>Location</code> indicates the target of a redirection (or the URL of a newly created resource), while {{HTTPHeader("Content-Location")}} indicates, when <a href="/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Content_negotiation">content negotiation</a> happened, the direct URL to use to access the resource, without the need of further content negotiation.</p>

<table class="properties">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th scope="row">Header type</th>
   <td>{{Glossary("Response header")}}</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th scope="row">{{Glossary("Forbidden header name")}}</th>
   <td>no</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

<h2 id="Syntax">Syntax</h2>

<pre class="syntaxbox">
Location: &lt;url&gt;
</pre>

<h2 id="Directives">Directives</h2>

<dl>
 <dt>&lt;url&gt;</dt>
 <dd>A relative (to the request URL) or absolute URL.</dd>
</dl>

<h2 id="Examples">Examples</h2>

<pre>
Location: /index.html</pre>

<h2 id="Specifications">Specifications</h2>

<table class="standard-table">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th scope="col">Specification</th>
   <th scope="col">Title</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{RFC("7231", "Location", "7.1.2")}}</td>
   <td>Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

<h2 id="Browser_compatibility">Browser compatibility</h2>

<p class="hidden">The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you’d like to contribute to the data, please check out <a href="https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/README.md">https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/README.md</a> and send us a pull request.</p>

<p>{{Compat}}</p>

<h2 id="See_also">See also</h2>

<ul>
 <li>{{HTTPHeader("Content-Location")}}</li>
 <li>Status of responses including a <code>Location</code> header: {{HTTPStatus("201")}}, {{HTTPStatus("301")}}, {{HTTPStatus("302")}}, {{HTTPStatus("303")}}, {{HTTPStatus("307")}}, {{HTTPStatus("308")}}.</li>
</ul>