Re: draft-nottingham-http-link-header-05: a question and an experimental implementation

Re my last paragraph below, I hadn't checked RFC 4287 for a
description of the "type" attribute.  Newbie error, apologies.

With that out of the way, what's the thinking on the duplication of
link elements and link headers?  Are there mechanisms for UAs to
indicate which they prefer?  I've been through a year's worth of
archive now and didn't find this addressed anywhere.

Thanks,
Mike

2009/6/19 Michael Burrows <asplake@googlemail.com>:
> I have a question on draft-nottingham-http-link-header-05: is there an
> agreed mechanism for clients to indicate whether they want link
> headers, the equivalent html/xml elements, or neither?  It seems
> wasteful to generate redundant or unneeded data, especially while
> client support for the headers is not widespread.   Apologies if this
> has been covered previously (I did review the April-June archive).
>
> Meanwhile, you may be interested in an experimental implementation of
> link headers (&/or elements) for Ruby on Rails, generating them from
> metadata constructed from the application's routing config.  Please
> drop me a line if you'd like to play with it.  There is a Python
> library too but it lacks the server framework integration.
>
> I went with the hash URI approach [1] to identifying extension
> relation types, with the fragment pointing inside the metadata
> obtainable (in multiple formats) via the "describedby" links.  See for
> example the last two links below:
>
>    Link: <http://example.com/users/dojo>; rel="self"; type="user",
>          <http://example.com/described_routes/user>;
> rel="describedby"; type="ResourceTemplate",
>          <http://example.com/described_routes/user?user_id=dojo>;
> rel="describedby"; type="ResourceTemplate",
>          <http://example.com/users>; rel="up"; type="users",
>          <http://example.com/users/dojo/edit>; rel="edit";
> rel="http://example.com/described_routes/user#edit"; type="edit_user",
>          <http://example.com/users/dojo/articles>;
> rel="http://example.com/described_routes/user#articles";
> type="user_articles"
>
> If I interpret the spec correctly, there is no strong guidance on the
> use of the "type" attribute.  I hope that my usage here seems
> reasonable.
>
>    [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/#hashuri
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike
> mjb@asplake.co.uk
> http://positiveincline.com
> http://twitter.com/asplake
>

Received on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 06:32:46 UTC