Re: Non-XML parsing for submission response body

Here’s a suggestion, how about @output-method, for the xf:instance element as it connects the use of XSLT’s xsl:output element with its method attribute.


Regards

Philip

From: Alain Couthures <alain.couthures@agencexml.com>
Date: Sunday, 15 April 2018 at 08:51
To: "public-xformsusers@w3.org" <public-xformsusers@w3.org>
Subject: Non-XML parsing for submission response body
Resent-From: <public-xformsusers@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Sunday, 15 April 2018 at 08:50


All,

Nowadays, there are REST APis in JSON format only: data is to be provided in JSON serialization while responses might be in JSON format or just in text, or HTML, format.

With XForms 2.0, @serialization and @mediatype can be used to submit an instance in non-XML format. Then, an instance can be targeted by the submission for storing the response body. There is always a Content-Type associated with the HTTP response but, frequently, this value is poorly provided or even inadequate.

A way to override the response Content-Type is required. At submission level, @response-mediatype might be specified and, possibly, @request-mediatype could also explicitly replace @mediatype. Yet, @mediatype could also be added to the instance element, allowing also its use for external sources.

XSLTForms already supports @mediatype for instance element. It has been added for both external sources and inline data.

Using instance/@mediatype also for submission response body would mean that the same instance could only be used with one external serialization while it is always stored in an XML tree. It might be true in most cases but specifying mediatypes at submission level does not have this drawback.

Maybe "@mediatype" is not the best name at instance level for this purpose and, instead of @serialization/@request-mediatype/@response-mediatype, @serialization/@mediatype/@parsing could also be more explicit. For both XSLT and XQuery, the way data is to be serialized is named "method" (already used in XForms for HTTP verb...) and its values might be "xml", "html", "json",... It could probably be better for XForms 2.0 if @serialization could accept similar values instead of content types ("xml" vs. "application/xml", ...) even if the multipart serialization support is also to be considered. Identically, instead of instance/@mediatype, something like instance/@format or instance/@notation could be more convenient.

What do you think?

-Alain