Scraping using google cloud function it finished with status code: 304

Question

I am trying out google cloud functions, it works but finishes with status code of 304 not sure what is the reason. Below is the code,

//gcloud beta functions deploy scrapeGitCollection --trigger-http
var cheerio = require('cheerio');
var request = require('request');

function getDateTime() {

    var date = new Date();

    var hour = date.getHours();
    hour = (hour < 10 ? "0" : "") + hour;

    var min  = date.getMinutes();
    min = (min < 10 ? "0" : "") + min;

    var sec  = date.getSeconds();
    sec = (sec < 10 ? "0" : "") + sec;

    var year = date.getFullYear();

    var month = date.getMonth() + 1;
    month = (month < 10 ? "0" : "") + month;

    var day  = date.getDate();
    day = (day < 10 ? "0" : "") + day;

    return year + "/" + month + "/" + day + " " + hour + ":" + min + ":" + sec;

  }  

var scrape = new Promise((resolve, reject) =>{
    var text;
    var array = [];

    request({
        method: 'GET',
        url: 'https://github.com/collections'
    }, function(err, response, body) {
        if (err) return reject(err);

        // Tell Cherrio to load the HTML
        $ = cheerio.load(body);
        $('.col-10 h2 a').each(function(i, element) {
            var node = $(this);
            text = node.text();
            //console.log(text);
            array.push(text);
        });

        text = JSON.stringify(array);
        console.log(text);
        resolve(text);
    });     
});

// [START functions_helloworld_http]
/**
 * HTTP Cloud Function.
 * @param {Object} req Cloud Function request context.
 * @param {Object} res Cloud Function response context.
 *
*/
exports.scrapeGitCollection = (req, res) => {
    console.log('Triggered @ '+getDateTime());
    scrape.then((data) =>{
        res.send(`Hello ${data || 'World'}!`);
    }).catch( (errorMessage) =>{
        console.error(errorMessage);
    });

  };
// [END functions_helloworld_http]

This is the log i see in stackdriver

2018-07-05 22:19:39.181 IST
scrapeGitCollection
x6mbdi17rdj7
Function execution took 7 ms, finished with status code: 304
{
 insertId:  "000000-4f8925ba-a5a5-4f0e-9c32-906e91374e32"  
 labels: {…}  
 logName:  "projects/btd-in-16062018/logs/cloudfunctions.googleapis.com%2Fcloud-functions"  
 receiveTimestamp:  "2018-07-05T16:49:45.425756526Z"  
 resource: {…}  
 severity:  "DEBUG"  
 textPayload:  "Function execution took 7 ms, finished with status code: 304"  
 timestamp:  "2018-07-05T16:49:39.181731257Z"  
}

For debugging purposes, i had added below line in scrape() function, it did not appear in the log.

console.log(text);

If i forcibly say as below, i get the above console.log text with the results.

res.status(200).send(`Hello ${data || 'World'}!`);

I don't want to forcibly say status(200). Would like to resolve 304 which i was getting earlier.

Answer 1

According to Mozilla's documentation, the 304 status code indicates that the request was redirected, likely to a cached resource. I believe this has something to do with the body of the response always being the same, because if you change the line with the response to

res.send(`Hello ${data || 'World'}!` + getDateTime());

then you'll see that the response code is 200 every time.

Note that 304 isn't an error. The error status codes are 400 and above.