What's the difference between HTTP 301 and 308 status codes?

What's the difference between HTTP 301 and 308 status codes?

• 301 (Moved Permanently): This and all future requests should be directed to the given URI.

• 308 (Permanent Redirect): The request and all future requests should be repeated using another URI.

They seem to be similar.

An overview of 301, 302 and 307

The RFC 7231, the current reference for semantics and content of the HTTP/1.1 protocol, defines the 301 (Moved Permanently) and 302 (Found) status code, that allows the request method to be changed from POST to GET. This specification also defines the 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code that doesn't allow the request method to be changed from POST to GET.

See more details below:

6.4.2. 301 Moved Permanently

The 301 (Moved Permanently) status code indicates that the target resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs. [...]

Note: For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the request method from POST to GET for the subsequent request. If this behavior is undesired, the 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code can be used instead.

6.4.3. 302 Found

The 302 (Found) status code indicates that the target resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client ought to continue to use the effective request URI for future requests. [...]

Note: For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the request method from POST to GET for the subsequent request. If this behavior is undesired, the 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code can be used instead.

6.4.7. 307 Temporary Redirect

The 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code indicates that the target resource resides temporarily under a different URI and the user agent MUST NOT change the request method if it performs an automatic redirection to that URI. Since the redirection can change over time, the client ought to continue using the original effective request URI for future requests. [...]

Note: This status code is similar to 302 (Found), except that it does not allow changing the request method from POST to GET. This specification defines no equivalent counterpart for 301 (Moved Permanently) (RFC 7238, however, defines the status code 308 (Permanent Redirect) for this purpose).

Changing the request method from POST to GET

The "historical reasons" in which a user agent may change a request from POST to GET is explained in an Eric Lawrence's post from the IEInternals blog, dated from 19 August 2011.

The post quotes the definition of the status code 301 from the obsolete RFC 1945, published in May 1996, which defined the HTTP/1.0. The key part from that quote is:

Note: When automatically redirecting a POST request after receiving a 301 status code, some existing user agents will erroneously change it into a GET request.

Then the author continues:

[...] those “user agents” referred to in this remark included the popular browsers of the day, including Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Arguably, this behavior is exactly what most websites wanted — after a successful POST, send the user to a different URL to show them something else. However, the POST-converted-to-GET behavior isn’t what the authors of HTTP had intended.

The need for 308

The RFC 7238 has been created to define the 308 (Permanent Redirect) status code, that is similar to 301 (Moved Permanently) but does not allows the request method to be changed from POST to GET.

The 308 status code is now defined by the RFC 7538 (that obsoleted the RFC 7238).

3. 308 Permanent Redirect

The 308 (Permanent Redirect) status code indicates that the target resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs. Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the effective request URI to one or more of the new references sent by the server, where possible. [...]

Note: This status code is similar to 301 (Moved Permanently), except that it does not allow changing the request method from POST to GET.

So we have the following:

                                                             +-----------+-----------+
                                                             | Permanent | Temporary |
+------------------------------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+
| Allows changing the request method from POST to GET        | 301       | 302       |
+------------------------------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+
| Doesn't allow changing the request method from POST to GET | 308       | 307       |
+------------------------------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+

Choosing the most suitable status code

Michael Kropat put together a set of decision charts that helps to determine the best status code for each situation. See the following for 2xx and 3xx status codes: