Re: Multistatus responses

> It is my understanding that methods only return a multistatus when they
> effect multiple resources.

PROPPATCH uses 207 responses for methods on single resources, I think?

> So for example, you could DELETE a collection and get a multistatus if
> it failed indicating which resource in the collection couldn't be
> deleted. If the DELETE failed because the collection itself was locked,
> then you could also return a single status as the members were
> unaffected.

Yes, so if it failed, why not return a 4xx class response which is what
4xx class responses are for? The 'degree' to which it failed (i.e., which
resources couldn't be deleted) is indicated only by the response body, but
the bottom line is that the request did NOT succeed, which is what 2xx
responses are for.

I'm not trying to suggest that multistatus responses should be scrapped,
only that they should not have a fixed status code.

Regads,

joe

-- 
Joe Orton
jeo101@york.ac.uk ... joe@orton.demon.co.uk
http://www.orton.demon.co.uk/

Received on Friday, 22 January 1999 14:12:30 UTC