Rails Scales!

Using HTTP Headers to Speed Up Your Application

HTTP headers add crucial information to both requests and responses. They are central for tons of basic functionalities of the web, like authentication (both the Authentication and the Cookie header), localization (the Accept-language header), tracking (User-Agent, Referral…), and many others. In this section, we are going to explore the most important headers related to performance, in particular, the ones that define caching mechanisms. Thanks to them, a client (typically from the browser) can decide to skip requests, as the server has stated that no change in the response will be found. On the server side, it can also make the application more performant. The client can pass a header (If-None-Match ...