Re: PATCH vs multipart/byteranges vs Content-Range

Brian Smith wrote:
 > ...
>> or to process the payload as a partial replace?
> 
> You would need a new header, that works like Content-Range, but applies
> to the resource at the request URI instead of the entity body. But, even
> if you had such a header, you have no way of choosing which
> representation(s) of the resource it applies to. That is problematic

...that's why it is common wisdom not no apply write operations to 
content-negotiated resources.

> because byte-ranges are very representation-dependent; a byte-range for
> a compressed variant is going to be quite different than the byte range
> for the uncompressed variant.

That's correct, but it applies to any kind of write operation, such as 
PUT or PATCH.

> By the way, I really like the idea of a patch format based on
> multipart/byte-ranges; I even think that such a format should be a
> SHOULD requirement for servers that implement PATCH.

It's certainly a candidate.

It just would be nice if it would allow one-part entities. Maybe we 
should fix this to make it more useful for PATCH?

BR, Julian

Received on Saturday, 16 February 2008 16:18:52 UTC