Re: Allow: header and supported methods

Ben Evans <ben.evans@parasolsolutions.com> wrote:

> Surely for a server looking after versioned resources,
> asking it "What If?" questions based on its current
> state is a bit useless?

I agree, and I think that is why people were happy enough to say that the
response includes methods that are valid for different states of the same
resource.

> I mean, if I have a checked-out resource, and I don't
> have an exclusive write-lock on the resource, then
> requests to the server such as "If I try and commit,
> will I be able to?" can only be usefully answered by
> the server with: "I don't know, unless you try."

Yes, and there are other examples.  You could have changed the state of the
resource (or DELETEd it for that matter) between me asking for the allowed
methods and then actually issuing it.

> Is there a more subtle issue I'm missing?

Don't think so, other than to say the principal use of the supported-*-sets
is to allow for resource 'classification' which is typically required for
high-level UIs to choose icons, grey-out or enable menu options, and so on.

Regards,
Tim

Received on Tuesday, 14 August 2001 08:26:56 UTC