What's the proper way to set the Location header for an HTTP 201 response in a Java Servlet application

Question

Consider the following code sending an HTTP 201 \"Created\" response to the client:

    String url = \"/app/things?id=42\"; // example
    response.setStatus(Htt         


        

Answer 1

Decided to go with Julian Reschke's advice and violate the spec! At least I added the following comment:

        /* Note: strictly speaking (per section 14.30 of RFC 2616), the Location header 
         * requires an *absolute URI*. However, in practice, many web 
         * applications send an *absolute path* instead. This is interoperable, 
         * that is, works in popular web browsers  (according to 
         * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_location).
         * 
         * As the information required to set the Location header to an absolute URI
         * is not generally available to a Servlet, we go with the flow and send
         * an absolute path instead (in violation of RFC 2616).
         * 
         * There is an issue filed with Hypertext Transfer Protocol Bis (httpbis) 
         * working group to resolve this problem here:
         * http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/185
         */
        response.setHeader("Location", url);

The reason I don't want to send the absolute URI myself is because I have seen problems with this when behind load-balancers and other production infrastructure. Although in dev mode "http://localhost:8080/foo" tends to work fine :))

Will accept Julian's answer now ...