- From: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>
- Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 15:56:36 -0500
- To: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com>
- Cc: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
On Feb 6, 2009, at 2:03 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote: > Sorry, that is not true. There are many resources involved in HTTP, > only > one of which is identified by the requested URI. Each of those > resources > may have representations, and the meaning of the payload in a > response message > is defined by the status code. A 404 response is going to contain a > representation of a resource on the server that describes that error. > A 200 response is going to contain a representation of the resource > that > was identified as the request target. > >> Webarch goes further and says that a 'representation' is 'of' the >> resource, meaning that there is a special relationship between the >> entity and the resource -- it carries the information associated >> with the resource's current state (in the REST sense), or something >> like that (a different story for services). This relationship >> doesn't hold for requests or non-200 responses. This sort of makes >> sense because in the English language a representation always >> represents something (is a representation of something). I'm not >> saying there is a reason for HTTPbis to make such a commitment - >> that could be considered 'application layer', and any theory of >> 'representation' could be left out of the protocol. > > I am not aware of any such conclusions in webarch, at least in the > one that > I approved for publication. > > ....Roy Cool! I guess I did make a logical leap there, assuming that 'representation' was shorthand for 'representation of the resource named by the request-URI'. Never occurred to me it could mean anything else. I always forget that you can CN a 404 entity. I prefer 'entity', though, as it is more neutral and doesn't lead to this confusion. Am I an outlier, or could anyone else make the same mistake? Maybe there should be an explanation "representation of what"? Sorry for adding to the muddle! Jonathan
Received on Friday, 6 February 2009 20:57:26 UTC