Re: PATCH vs multipart/byteranges vs Content-Range

On Feb 16, 2008, at 3:30 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:
> I was in the process of putting together an example of using  
> multipart/byteranges as a payload for the PATCH method when I  
> realized that RFC2616 requires that format to at least contain two  
> parts (partial responses in RFC2616 do not need multipart when  
> there's only a single part).

I would not recommend using any of the byte range features for PATCH.
IMO, byte ranges need a careful review of existing implementations
and removal of those features that make denial-of-service a problem.
That may include deprecation of multipart/byteranges.

PATCH is a very simple method -- look at the content-type to see the
format of the body, which contains instructions on how to apply a
desired state change.  The intent (when I added it back in 1995) was
to define patch media types that contained a first section containing
changes to metadata and then later sections containing the diffs.
The decision on which patch media type to support would largely
depend on the nature of the resource (and the ability of folks who
wanted them to get off their duff and define the types).  I started
on a definition of a patch format for YAML late last year, but it
was derailed by the partitioning work.

....Roy

Received on Saturday, 16 February 2008 19:58:54 UTC