mysterious Content-Length: 0

rubyonrails-talk
1

I am lost here. I have a very simple action:

    # DELETE /bookings/{id}     def destroy       adapter = adapter_for(@booking.chain_id)       adapter.cancel(@booking)       if @booking.update_attribute(:cancelled, true)         head :no_content       else         raise BookingGatewayError::SuccessfulButUnregistered       end     end

that returns a 204 if successful. In all my trials and in hello world applications I've done to debug this the Content-Length is 1 (you know Rails unconditionally sends a space as a workaround for Safari):

    HTTP/1.1 204 No Content     Connection: close     Status: 204 No Content     X-Runtime: 0.00507     Cache-Control: no-cache     Server: Mongrel 1.1.3     Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8     Content-Length: 1

but same rails in vendor, same mongrel, same everything I can think of gives a 0 in the production server:

    HTTP/1.1 204 No Content     Server: Mongrel 1.1.3     Status: 204 No Content     X-Runtime: 0.09667     Cache-Control: no-cache     Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8     Content-Length: 0

What could explain that 0?

-- fxn

2

There's nothing like explaining something to find it out.

I've remembered in production mod_proxy is running and it isn't in development or in the rest of the trials. I could reproduce it that way, looks like the Apache module is ignoring that somehow. Perhaps it ignores the response body altogether because it is a 204? I'll try to continue figuring out what's up with mod_proxy, but at least I have a hint now.

This is relevant because it means if you are behind mod_proxy the workaround is nullified.

-- fxn