RE: plural properties should become singular

Hi,

First of all, thanks a lot for this detailed analysis Ruben! I'm on the road
at the moment so just a quick mail. I'll write a more detailed one on the
weekend and will then also respond to the other mails.

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 6:32 PM, Ruben Verborgh wrote: 
> Dear all,
> 
> TL;DR: Since the range of the following properties is not a list, I
> think they should be singular:
> - hydra:mappings
> - hydra:members
> - hydra:operations
> - hydra:statusCodes
> - hydra:supportedClasses
> - hydra:supportedOperations
> - hydra:supportedProperties
> This mail argues why plural properties are not a good idea.

I agree, it would probably be a good idea to change them to singular. The
initial idea was to give users a hint about the expected cardinality but I
can see how this probably causes more confusion than it helps.

I've raised ISSUE-25 [1]


> The case of "statusCodes" shows to how much confusion this leads:
> we have both a "statusCode" and a "statusCodes" property.
> The situation would be that a resource can lead to "statusCodes" X, Y, Z,
> each of which have a "statusCode" 200, 400, 500, respectively.
> I think the correct way is that "statusCodes" becomes "status",
> and that the current statusCode remains the way it is.

Hm... I don't like "status" that much as it sounds like a definite list of
all status codes that will ever be returned. I would like to make it clearer
that it is just a hint or that it just provides additional documentation
about *some* status codes that *might* be returned.

 
> I would strongly suggest that all of the aforementioned properties are
> turned into singular; that would align Hydra with the best practices
> of all other vocabularies.
> I know that changing this can be a pain, but I think it's important we
> do this.

It's still early enough so it won't be that much pain. Better to change
things early enough.


Cheers,
Markus


[1] https://github.com/HydraCG/Specifications/issues/25

--
Markus Lanthaler
@markuslanthaler

Received on Thursday, 30 January 2014 10:58:28 UTC