Re: hold up

Nathan wrote:
> I've just been reading huge chunks of archived messages again, and 
> there's a consistent phrase coming out that's just flat out wrong.
> 
>   "a representation of the resource"
> 
> that's not what HTTP and the specs say, a representation is a 
> representation of the current or intended state of a resource. not a 
> representation of the resource.
> 
> A resource is a stateful abstraction whose state is managed by an 
> abstract protocol, the abstract protocol is realized via various machine 
> protocols (such as http) which manage the state of the resource via 
> messages and pass full or partial representations of the 
> current/intended state in various lexical forms.
> 
> Thus, an http/rest resource can *only* be something that has the 
> property of having it's state (even partially) managed via a transfer 
> protocol, something in the realm of the machine.
> 
> the weather in london cannot be a rest resource, unless you can 
> represent or manipulate it's current state via HTTP, which you can't, 
> you can only represent or manipulate information about the weather in 
> london with a transfer protocol.

[[ the HTTP interface is a property of that resource ]]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jan/0432.html

an HTTP resource can only be a thing which can have the HTTP interface 
as one of its properties.

Received on Saturday, 26 February 2011 10:20:09 UTC