Re: [w3c/webpayments-payment-apps-api] Payment app identifier to manifest filename mapping (#48)

**NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY**
To avoid confusion I am distinguishing between a **manifest** (a data structure defined to describe something) and a **manifest file** (a file containing data that adheres to the manifest data structure format)

To summarize, I believe we have consensus that we need to:
  1. Define a data structure for describing a **payment app** (a payment app manifest)
  1. Define a data structure for describing a **payment method** (a payment method manifest)
  1. Define a mechanism for fetching a **payment method manifest file** at a URL that is (or is derived from) a **payment method identifier** and that contains a **payment method manifest**.
  1. Design the **payment method manifest**  such that it can contain embedded **payment app manifest(s)** as the values of properties such as `default_app` or `allowed_apps` or similar. (i.e. Where the the data type of a property of the payment method manifest is a payment app then the manifest will contain either a payment app identifier or an embedded payment app manifest.

This issue addresses a 5th requirement which you have raised and @rsolomakhin agrees is a requirement, namely the need to:
  5. Define a mechanism for fetching a **payment app manifest file** at a URL that is (or is derived from) a **payment app identifier**

I think that before we do this we need to finalize what the Payment App Identifier will look like because there are some questions I'm not sure we've answered:

 1. Is it a always URL, and if so:
 1. Is it equivalent to the scope of the ServiceWorker for web-based Payment Apps? (I believe there have been some concerns about this)
 1. If the payment app is a native app what does the URL point to?

I believe that requirements 2 - 4 are in the scope of the **Payment Method Identifier** specification and are being worked on by @maxpassion in parallel to the other work being done on the PMI spec (per resolution on the call yesterday)

I believe that 1 and 5 are in the scope of the **Payment Apps API** specification and should be on the TODO list of the Payment Apps task force.

@ianbjacobs , @rsolomakhin , @maxpassion Do we agree? 

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Received on Friday, 18 November 2016 08:23:27 UTC