where is the intended logic to be applied to etag/if-matches described in concise terms?

good morning;

the recommendation indicates the client and server should interact in a way which employs etag and if-matches headers to facilitate controlled changes to repository. content.
it fails, however, to describe how the values are to be interpreted over the life-cycle of a container and/or its content.
among the tests, testPutRequiresIfMatch makes reference to the intended behavior, but does not indicate the logic according to which the intended behavior is to be achieved.
in particular, the initial post the the root container is without a match constraint, but should succeed, while the subsequent put to a member should fail for that reason.

an examination of the mailing list archive yields no insights while the primer present just trivial out of context cases and the best practices say nothing.
is there somewhere some commentary which describes to state machine which is to apply?

best regards, from berlin,
---
james anderson | james@dydra.com | http://dydra.com

Received on Tuesday, 10 November 2015 10:39:29 UTC