Possible hidden caching default in Req, receiving status 304

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10

OK, I was able to reproduce it with this script:

Mix.install([:req])

url = "https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2021/SLDL/tl_2021_50_sldl.zip"

Enum.each(1..50, fn _ ->
  IO.inspect(Req.get!(url).status)
  Process.sleep(2000)
end)

interestingly, for me, it always either printer 200,200,… OR 304,304,… never one or the other (though I didn’t run it for long)

%Req.Response{headers: [..., {"vary", "Accept-Encoding"}, ...]}

Req by default sets accept-encoding with gzip and others. Maybe that is confusing the server? You can turn it off like this: compressed: false.

I have tried this a few times and always kept getting 200s:

Mix.install([:req])

url = "https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2021/SLDL/tl_2021_50_sldl.zip"

Enum.each(1..50, fn _ ->
  IO.inspect(Req.get!(url, compressed: false).status)
  Process.sleep(2000)
end)
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