Is the client supposed to behave differently? How?
7 Answers
301 is a permanent redirect, and 302 is a temporary redirect.
The browser is allowed to cache the 301 but 302 means it has to hit our system every time. assuming that we want to minimize the load on our system, 301 is the right decision. Imagine creating URL shortening service for a big company, we try to get as less hit to our servers by the clients
But if the user wants to edit their short URLs, it might take more time than usual for the browser to pick up the change because the browser has the old one cached. Also, if you want to offer users metrics on how often their URL is getting hit, 301 would mean we would not necessarily see every hit from the client. So if you want analytics as a feature later on and a smooth user experience for editing URLs, 302 is a better choice.
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