javascript - Google.com and clients1.google.com/generate_204

Question

I was looking into google.com's Net activity in firebug just because I was curious and noticed a request was returning "204 No Content."

It turns out that a 204 No Content "is primarily intended to allow input for actions to take place without causing a change to the user agent's active document view, although any new or updated metainformation SHOULD be applied to the document currently in the user agent's active view." Whatever.

I've looked into the JS source code and saw that "generate_204" is requested like this:

(new Image).src="http://clients1.google.com/generate_204"

No variable declaration/assignment at all.

My first idea is that it was being used to track if Javascript is enabled. But the "(new Image).src='...'" call is called from a dynamically loaded external JS file anyway, so that would be pointless.

Anyone have any ideas as to what the point could be?

UPDATE

"/generate_204" appears to be available on many google services/servers (e.g., maps.google.com/generate_204, maps.gstatic.com/generate_204, etc...).

You can take advantage of this by pre-fetching the generate_204 pages for each google-owned service your web app may use. Like This:

window.onload = function(){
    var two_o_fours = [
        // google maps domain ...
        "http://maps.google.com/generate_204",

        // google maps images domains ... 
        "http://mt0.google.com/generate_204",
        "http://mt1.google.com/generate_204",
        "http://mt2.google.com/generate_204",
        "http://mt3.google.com/generate_204",

        // you can add your own 204 page for your subdomains too!
        "http://sub.domain.com/generate_204"
    ];
    for(var i = 0, l = two_o_fours.length; i < l; ++i){
        (new Image).src = two_o_fours[i];
    }
};

Answer 1

I found this old Thread while google'ing for generate_204 as Android seems to use this to determine if the wlan is open (response 204 is received) closed (no response at all) or blocked (redirect to captive portal is present). In that case a notification is shown that a log-in to WiFi is required...