- From: Paul Tyson <phtyson@sbcglobal.net>
- Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 18:16:02 -0600
- To: EXPath CG <public-expath@w3.org>
The current draft of the Webapp spec [1] does not specify whether a webapp must have a name. It seems to imply or assume that all webapps will have a non-empty name corresponding to a path part of a URL, but I can't find any specification text or schema that requires this. I have a use case that wants a nameless webapp, to allow coverage of the complete URL space under an authority, without constraining any url to have a webapp path part. (I raised the question, in somewhat misleading form, on this list [2].) In my specific case, a single nameless webapp would work (no other webapps under the authority are required), but I don't see any reason to limit the nameless webapp to being a singleton. That is, one should have the freedom to include (or not include) a nameless webapp (root="") alongside any number of named webapps. Florent and I have had a brief discussion off-list about the merits and dangers of my suggestion. We thought since the spec is still under review we should put the question to the community for opinions. The choices are: 1. Don't allow nameless webapps. (Servlex behavior prior to 0.9.2.) 2. Allow a singleton webapp to be nameless, when the intent is to serve everything under the webapp's context root. No other webapps allowed in the same context. (Servlex behavior at 0.9.2.) 3. Allow a nameless webapp to be deployed alongside other named webapps in the same context. The nameless webapp would always be the "default", to be chosen last if no matching webapp was found. The danger, which Florent pointed out, is that subsequent deployment of a new webapp could overshadow a url pattern specified in the nameless webapp, which could change the behavior of the site unexpectedly. Are there any other implementations of the webapp spec besides Florent's Servlex [3]? If so, how do they handle this? Regards, --Paul [1] http://expath.org/spec/webapp [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-expath/2015Feb/0043.html [3] http://servlex.net
Received on Monday, 2 March 2015 00:16:33 UTC