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Should the reload-navigation flag behave similarly to the "reload" cache mode? #1899

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@trflynn89

What is the issue with the Fetch Standard?

In the HTML spec, we are instructed to set the fetch request's reload-navigation flag during document reloads:

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/browsing-the-web.html#create-navigation-params-by-fetching

  1. If entry's document state's reload pending is true, then set request's reload-navigation flag.

This flag is ultimately only ever used in the fetch spec for the isReloadNavigation attribute.

Should this flag also affect interaction with the cache, in the same way that the cache mode does? That is, the HTTP cache is not checked:

https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/#http-network-or-cache-fetch

  1. If httpRequest’s cache mode is neither "no-store" nor "reload", then:
    1. Set storedResponse to the result of selecting a response from the httpCache, possibly needing validation, as per the "Constructing Responses from Caches" chapter of HTTP Caching, if any.

The use case we're working through in Ladybird here is when the user explicitly refreshes a page. Both Firefox and Chrome will send a conditional request for the document URL for user-initiated reloads (i.e. they attach an If-Modified-Since request header). Chrome will additionally attach a Cache-Control: max-age=0 request header.

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  1. sideshowbarker commented on Aug 5, 2026

    @sideshowbarker
    Member

    Related HTML spec issue: whatwg/html#12760.

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