If-Unmodified-Since

The If-Unmodified-Since request HTTP header makes the request conditional: the server will send back the requested resource, or accept it in the case of a POST or another non-safe method, only if it has not been last modified after the given date. If the request has been modified after the given date, the response will be a 412 (Precondition Failed) error.

There are two common use cases:

• In conjunction non-safe methods, like POST, it can be used to implement an optimistic concurrency control, like done by some wikis: editions are rejected if the stored document has been modified since the original has been retrieved.
• In conjunction with a range request with a If-Range header, it can be used to ensure that the new fragment requested comes from an unmodified document.

Header type	Request header
Forbidden header name	no

Syntax

If-Unmodified-Since: <day-name>, <day> <month> <year> <hour>:<minute>:<second> GMT

Directives

<day-name>

One of "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", or "Sun" (case-sensitive).

<day>

2 digit day number, e.g. "04" or "23".

<month>

One of "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec" (case sensitive).

<year>

4 digit year number, e.g. "1990" or "2016".

<hour>

2 digit hour number, e.g. "09" or "23".

<minute>

2 digit minute number, e.g. "04" or "59".

<second>

2 digit second number, e.g. "04" or "59".

GMT

Greenwich Mean Time. HTTP dates are always expressed in GMT, never in local time.

Examples

If-Unmodified-Since: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 07:28:00 GMT 

Specifications

Specification	Title
RFC 7232, section 3.4: If-Unmodified-Since	Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Conditional Requests

Browser compatibility

See also

• If-Unmodified-since
• If-Match
• If-None-Match
• If-Range
• 412 Precondition Failed