Jan 11

Content-SHA1 (or MD5) HTTP Header for download files

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Content-SHA1 HTTP header may be useful for hash integrity as well as file download caching.

It should widely developed and have support by cache proxy server, web browser, OS search indexing, etc. Hope it will.

Content-SHA1: (sha1) a927bc412550dadeff573220d00e1505601e8aacd

For example, in scenario that we put download file name 'fooprogramsetup.exe' in many download mirrors which absolutely have different URL ... So cache (proxy) server will not see this file as SAME file, If different users download same file but from different mirrors. Cache proxy will cache it separately and may need to put DIRECT request to download server for new URL even it is the same file. If we have this header, cache can check local cache and then send the same file if hash is match (also need more key: filesize, mtime to make sure that is the same).

Not only proxy, browser may can be configure content-check folder or cache folder, browser can look into hashing of cache or file in content-check folder to see it is the same file and notice the user.


Implementation should also implement in web server directly by looking for hash suffix, for example:

fooprogramsetup.exe may have fooprogramsetup.exe.SHA1 in that folder, so web server pick sha1 and send it automatically (if it configured to do).

Hope this will developed in the future. I am not sure is there any implemented on some of web servers and proxy already, but ... I think it is good idea to do!

Posted by SF-Alpha

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