Re: PATCH draft

Sure.  But the client code I sent would break that server's model.   
There's nowhere in the spec that says that you can compare a weak ETag  
to a strong ETag by stripping the "W/".

Lisa

On Feb 4, 2009, at 4:30 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:

> Julian Reschke wrote:
>> ...
>>> This spec text doesn't require strong ETags to be used by the  
>>> server.  It sidesteps the issue that we have no clue what a weak  
>>> ETag would mean and how a client could reasonably use it -- it  
>>> just says what the client can do if it gets a strong one.  Your  
>>> proposed text could lead clients very astray if a weak ETag was  
>>> used as defined in RFC2616, and a PATCH was applied to a document  
>>> that has slight changes from what the client thought it would be.
>> But it's the server that mints the etags (decided on strong vs  
>> weak), and also which implements a specific PATCH format. Thus, it  
>> seems, it's best to let the server decide whether it can execute a  
>> given conditional request.
>> ...
>
> ...adding an example:
>
> Consider a server that uses an XML database as backing store, which  
> thus uses weak etags because it can't guarantee to preserve the  
> ordering of attribute values. That server wouldn't be able to  
> support a binary patch format (as in "set octet x to y"), but it  
> could support a patch format that is based on the XML Infoset  
> ("insert element <foo> after the node selected by XPath..."), even  
> for weak etags.
>
> That's why I think the server should have the last word on this.
>
> BR, Julian
>


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