Re: Make p:http-request required?

On 5/8/07, Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> wrote:
>
>
> Alex Milowski wrote:
> > In the case of making an HTTP request, the URI and other aspects of
> > making the HTTP request often aren't configuration
> parameters.  Certainly
> > in the REST architecture, you need to dynamically formulate the
> > actual request from some set of input XML.  As such, there is very
> little
> > that easily maps to a simple option without severe limitations.
>
> I think you're saying that if the values that are used in options
> originate from XML documents then the step should be configured using
> XML rather than options. I thought that was the point of allowing
> <p:pipe> etc. within <p:option>: to set the value of an option from an
> XML document.
>
> > The current input and output document representation maps directly
> > to the HTTP protocol specification.  You can't map HTTP to a finite
> > set of name/value pairs without making decisions that seriously
> > limit functionality.
>
> HTTP headers are name/value pairs. There are standard HTTP headers that
> could be options. Extension headers can be catered for using parameters.
> How would that limit functionality?


There are other things to set than HTTP headers as well as entity bodies
that
you might want to post that aren't XML (e.g.
application/x-www-form-urlencoded)
that can be embedded inside the c:body element.


-- 
--Alex Milowski
"The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the
inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language
considered."

Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics