What does HTTP/1.1 302 mean exactly?

Question

Some article I read once said that it means jumping (from one URI to another), but I detected this \"302\" even when there was actually no jumping at all!

Answer 1

First lets take a scenario how 301 and 302 works

1. 301 --> Permanently moved

Imagine there is some resource like --> http://hashcodehub.com/user , now in future we are changing the resouce name to user- info --> now the url should be http://hashcodehub.com/user-info --> but the user is still trying to access the same URL --> http://hashcodehub.com/user --> here from the backend we can redirect the user to the new url and send the status code as 301 --> which is used for permanently moved.

Above I have explained how 301 Works

Lets understand how 302 will be used in real life

2. 302 --> Temporary redirection --> here the complete url does not need to be changed but for some reason we are redirecting to resource at different locations. Here in the location header field we will give the value of the new resource url browser will again make the request to the resource url in the response location header field.

3. 302 can be used just in case if there is something not appropriate content on our page .While we solve that issue we can redirect all our used to some temporary url and fix the issue.

4. It can also be used if there is some attach on the website and some pages requires restoration in that case also we can redirect the user to the different resource.

5. The redirect 302 serves, for example, to have several versions of a homepage in different languages.The main one can be in English; but if the visitors come from other countries then this system automatically redirects them to page in their language.

Answer 2

As per the http status code definitions a 302 indicates a (temporary) redirect. "The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI"