Headers

HTTP headers can be found in both the HTTP Request and HTTP Response.

Request Headers

The following headers are sent to each ZEIT Now deployment and can be used to process the request before sending back a response. These headers can be read from the Request object in your Serverless Function.

host

This header represents the domain name as it was accessed by the client. If the deployment has been aliased and the client visited the alias URL, it contains the alias instead of the underlying deployment URL.

now-id

A unique identifier for each request.

x-forwarded-host

This header is identical to the host header.

x-forwarded-proto

This header represents the protocol of the forwarded server, typically https in production and httpin development.

x-forwarded-for

The public ip address of the client that made the request.

x-now-deployment-url

This header represents the unique deployment, not the alias. For example, test-5uyfnapzg.now.sh.

x-now-trace

Contains a list of regions through which the request has traversed, usually the region closest to the visitor.

x-real-ip

This header is identical to the x-forwarded-for header.

x-zeit-co-forwarded-for

This header is identical to the x-forwarded-for header.

Response Headers

The following headers are included in ZEIT Now deployment responses and indicate certain factors of the environment. These headers can be viewed from the Browser's Dev Tools or using an HTTP client such as curl -I <DEPLOYMENT_URL>.

cache-control

Used to specify directives for caching mechanisms in both the Network layer cache and the browser cache. See the Cache Control Headers section for more detail. The default value is cache-control: public, max-age=0, must-revalidate which instructs the network layer and the browser not to cache.

content-length

An integer that indicates the number of bytes in the response.

content-type

The media type that describes the nature and format of the response.

date

A timestamp indicating when the response was generated.

server: now

Similar to [now: 1](https://zeit.co/docs/v2/network/headers/#now:-1). This header can be overridden by other proxies (e.g., Cloudflare).

strict-transport-security

A header often abbreviated as HSTS that tells browsers that the resource should only be requested over HTTPS. The default value is strict-transport-security: max-age=63072000 (2 years)

x-now-cache

This header's value indicates whether the response was served from ZEIT's edge cache.

The following values are possible when the content being served is static or uses a Cache-Control header.

x-now-id

The unique identifier for each request.

x-now-trace

Contains a list of regions through which the request has traversed, usually the region center closest to you.

Cache-Control Header

There are a few methods to enable the Network Layer cache with the Cache-Control header.

s-maxage

Setting the directive to s-maxage=60 will instruct the Network Layer to cache the response for 60 seconds. A request can be cached anywhere from 1-31,536,000 seconds (max 1 year). When s-maxage is set, the Network Layer strips the s-maxage directive and does not return it to the client.

stale-while-revalidate

In addition to setting s-maxage the cache control directive can be combined with stale-while-revalidate in order to serve a stale response from the cache and update the cache in the background:

cache-control: s-maxage=1, stale-while-revalidate

This instructs the Network Layer cache to:

• Serve from the cache for 1 second.
• Return a stale request (if requested after 1 second).
• Update the cache in the background asynchronously (if requested after 1 second).

If you need to do a synchronous revalidation you can set the pragma: no-cache header along with the cache-control header. This can be used to get an idea of how long the background revalidation is taking and sets the x-now-cache header to REVALIDATED.

Custom Headers

Custom headers can be added dynamically to the Response object in your Serverless Function or they can be added statically to the routes property in your now.json file.