Last-modified time stamp validation

In the What is conditional/ validation request i explained concept of conditional request, which means the server will execute the request only if particular condition is met.

When a browser requests any resource, sometime the server response includes Last-modified header that specifies the time when the resource was last changed on the origin server like this


Last-Modified Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:41:23 GMT


This header tells the client that the requested resource was last modified on 22nd of July 2010. If requested resource is static file served by the HTTP Server, then this value would be equal to the file system modification time. The Last-modified time stamp is given in the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) with one second resolution.

When the browser/cache wants to validate if the resource that it has is changed, it will take the value of Last-modified header from the response that it already has and make a conditional get request by adding If-Modified-Since header to the request like this


If-Modified-Since Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:41:23 GMT


These are the disadvantages of using If-Modified-Since header for making conditional request

  • A file's time stamp might get updated without any changes in the actual content of the file. In that case any conditional get request will result in 200 response and will send the full body of resource

  • One of the common problems in that HTTP servers clocks are out of synch. Even if your environment has multiple HTTP servers they might not have same time. So if you copy same file to different server at the same time, it might end up getting different last-modified time. SO if your request goes to different HTTP server, the last modified time wont match and it will return 200 for file that is not changed

  • If-modified-since values cannot be used for objects that may be updated more frequently than once per second, because value of Last-Modified is specified in seconds

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