Location URIs?

Hi all,

Now that we've gotten over the FPWD debate, I wanted to float the idea
of one more small field to add to the API - the ability to optionally
represent location as a URI:

interface <dfn id="geodetic-position">Position</dfn> {
...
readonly attribute DOMString locationURI;
};

This field would allow a UA to provide location to a location recipient 
in the form of a URI, which the site could then dereference (via XHR or 
by passing it to a back-end system) in order to get the UA's location.

This seems like it would have two important benefits, especially in the 
context of mobile devices:
1. It allows the referenced location server to apply privacy controls on 
behalf of the UA, which would relieve some of the burden on this API to 
provide privacy.
2. It allows the UA to provide location without doing positioning first, 
which means that in environments where someone other than the endpoint 
is doing positioning (e.g., in enterprise networks or using 
network-based wireless positioning), the UA doesn't have to spend any 
resources on finding its position -- only the location server and the 
location recipient.

The major drawback of using a URI is that it does require an additional 
HTTP request.  But given the number of requests that many pages makes 
now, one more doesn't seem like a big deal.  (Note also that pages using 
this API will probably want to make an XHR anyway to get 
location-specific info.)

Thoughts?

--Richard

Received on Wednesday, 21 January 2009 15:11:22 UTC