doHead

doHead is a term used in software development as the name of a function or method that implements an HTTP HEAD style operation. It is commonly used in web applications and API clients to obtain metadata about a resource without transferring the resource body.

In practical terms, a doHead implementation issues an HTTP request with the HEAD method to a given URL and returns the response headers and status. It is often used to check resource existence, last modification date, content length, or to validate permissions before performing a full GET. Some frameworks automatically map HEAD requests to the same handler as GET and simply suppress the response body; others require explicit doHead handlers to control headers.

Language and tool examples: In JavaScript with the Fetch API, a head request can be performed via fetch(url, { method: 'HEAD' }). In curl, the -I or --head option performs a HEAD request. In Python's requests library, requests.head(url) returns a Response with headers and status but no content. In web server frameworks, a doHead method may be part of a controller or resource class, following a doGet/doPost convention.

Naming and history: The "do" prefix appears in some codebases to denote action methods following a pattern (doGet, doPost, doHead). The semantics of doHead align with the HTTP HEAD specification: a response should include headers and status, but typically no body. Practical implementations may reuse GET logic and drop the body, or they may strictly implement HEAD behavior for compliance.