Re: Using server-driven negotiation

On 12/4/07, Andrew Daviel <advax@triumf.ca> wrote:
> What I was wondering is, would it be acceptable for a server to
> send "Vary: geo-position" to an initial request, which would then
> generate a user dialogue if the server was not previously known.
> The client would then send "Geo-Postion: lat;long" (or not)
> in the next and subsequent requests, and cached responses could be
> re-used on match.

I think that's a reasonable action to take based on the information
the server is communicating.  It shouldn't be the only way though, if
only because a server may be interested in consuming geo info, but not
using it in determining the returned representation.

You should also be aware of the problems IE < 7 has with the Vary header.

> Or, should we use a different extension header for the server to indicate
> its willingness to accept position data and hence trigger a dialogue,
> such as "Accept-Geo-Position: true"

Sure, though I'd avoid "Accept-*" since those are typically request
headers.  An HTML extension or two might be useful too: one for the
head, and one for forms perhaps.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com