Re: New "200 OK" status codes, PATCH & PROPFIND

Henrik Nordstrom wrote:
> ...
>>> Both should return the same ETag witch is that of the PROPGET results.
>> Why would they return the same ETag?
> 
> Because PROPATCH changes the properties, not the "object". But this use
> of ETag doesn't fit WebDAV very well..

The distinction between a WebDAV resource and its properties is fuzzy.

For instance, some "live properties" depend on the HTTP resource (such 
as DAV:getetag :-), others depend on locks.

Then, properties may be computed out of the resource (think extracting 
the <title> from HTML). The reverse may be true as well, so a PROPPATCH 
*can* affect "the object".

Things are further complicated by the fact that there are many kinds of 
PROPFINDs; the result depends both on request headers (such as Depth) 
and the request body. In theory, each unique combination of these may 
refer to a different variant (using Roy's new definition), and use a 
separate space of ETags.

So, in general, PROPFIND (under Roy's definition of "requested variant") 
wouldn't return the same ETag as GET (for the same Request-URI).

Best regards, Julian

Received on Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:57:55 UTC