Re: Content-Location in HTTP/1.1 text

Klaus Weide writes:
>I do not understand that part of RFC 2068.  To quote:
>
>--- begin ---
>   [...] In the case
>   where a resource has multiple entities associated with it, and those
>   entities actually have separate locations by which they might be
>   individually accessed, the server should provide a Content-Location
>   for the particular variant which is returned. In addition, a server
>   SHOULD provide a Content-Location for the resource corresponding to
>   the response entity.
>--- end ---
>
>What is the difference between the two cases described in these two
>sentences?  Is the second sentence dependent on the first sentence's
>"In the case where..."?
>
>Does the "In addition" mean that a response may end up having more than
>one C-Location headers?  (That would contradict the BNF immediately 
>below, but it sounds that way to me.)  What is the difference between
>the "resource corresponding to the response entity" and "the particular 
>variant which is returned"?
>
>(If this is just a cut-and-paste error, how should the text read?)

It is just a poor choice of words leading from the general meltdown
of using "variant" inappropriately.  It should say:

   When the entity enclosed in the response is accessable from a
   specific location separate from the requested resource's URI,
   that location SHOULD be provided in a Content-Location header
   field.  This provides a means for distinguishing different
   representations of a content negotiating resource, and an
   identifier for later requests that would apply to the resource
   of that specific entity instead of the negotiating resource.
   Content-Location MAY be provided for any entity, regardless of
   the nature of the requested resource, and does not imply that
   the response was negotiated.

or something to that effect.

 ...Roy T. Fielding
    Department of Information & Computer Science    (fielding@ics.uci.edu)
    University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3425    fax:+1(714)824-4056
    http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 1997 07:43:23 UTC