INM-WILDCARD

What it does

This is a sequence test — it uses the wildcard * value in If-None-Match to test whether the server recognizes that any current representation matches.

Step 1: Initial GET (confirm 2xx)

GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n
Host: localhost:8080\r\n
Connection: keep-alive\r\n
\r\n

Verifies the resource exists and returns a success response.

Step 2: Conditional GET (If-None-Match: *)

GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n
Host: localhost:8080\r\n
If-None-Match: *\r\n
\r\n

The wildcard * means “match any entity-tag”. Since step 1 confirmed the resource exists, the server should return 304 Not Modified.

What the RFC says

“If the field value is ‘*’, the condition is false if the origin server has a current representation for the target resource.” — RFC 9110 §13.1.2

In other words, If-None-Match: * means “give me the resource only if it doesn’t exist”. Since it does exist, the condition is false, and the server should return 304.

Why it matters

The wildcard If-None-Match is primarily used for preventing the “lost update” problem in PUT requests (only create if absent). For GET, it’s a useful test of whether the server has a standards-compliant conditional request implementation beyond simple ETag string matching.

Verdicts

• Pass — Step 2 returns 304 Not Modified
• Warn — Server returns 200 (ignores If-None-Match: *)
• Fail — Unexpected error (non-2xx/304 response)

Sources

• RFC 9110 §13.1.2