The HTTP HEAD method requests the headers that are returned if the specified resource would be requested with an HTTP GET method. Such a request can be done before deciding to download a large resource to save bandwidth, for example.
A response to a HEAD method should not have a body. If so, it must be ignored. Even so, entity headers describing the content of the body, like Content-Length may be included in the response. They don't relate to the body of the HEAD response, which should be empty, but to the body of similar request using the GET method would have returned as a response.
If the result of a HEAD request shows that a cached resource after a GET request is now outdated, the cache is invalidated, even if no GET request has been made.
| Request has body | No |
|---|---|
| Successful response has body | No |
| Safe | Yes |
| Idempotent | Yes |
| Cacheable | Yes |
| Allowed in HTML forms | No |
Syntax
HEAD /index.html
Specifications
| Specification | Title |
|---|---|
| RFC 7231, section 4.3.2: HEAD | Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
| Feature | Chrome | Firefox | Edge | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) |
| Feature | Android | Chrome for Android | Edge mobile | Firefox for Android | IE mobile | Opera Android | iOS Safari |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) |