The main use of client pull is to cause a document to be automatically reloaded on a regular basis. For example, consider the following document :

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="x">
<TITLE>Document ONE</TITLE>
<H1>This is a document</H1>
Here's some text.

If loaded into a browser supporting Client Pull, it would re-load itself every x seconds.

In most cases, Client Pull is used to automatically load another document (automatic re-direction). For this, the HTTP response header needs to be :

Refresh: x; URL=http://foo.bar/blatz.html

and the corresponding <META> element syntax is:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="x; URL=http://foo.bar/blatz.html">

This loads the document referenced by the URL part of the CONTENT attribute after x seconds.

© 1995-1998, Stephen Le Hunte