Re: Creation of Containers

hello all.

On 2012-11-07 13:38 , "Niclas Hoyer" <niclas@verbugt.de> wrote:
>is there a simple way to create a ldp container?

doing my usual "this is how AtomPub does it" comparison here. AtomPub
decided not to cover this part, so creating containers is out of scope.
you can find out about existing ones through service documents, but there
no protocol for changing this. implementations often support container
management, of course, and there are different ways to do this:

- designate a magic "container of containers" which essentially works as a
container factory. when you create a new member in this container, it by
definition becomes a new container that is then accessible like any other
container.

- add a protocol for the service document, so that people can change the
set of workspaces and collections. this requires a bit more work, but
allows a more nuanced set of interactions, because you can not just create
new collections, but also workspaces (which in AtomPub is a grouping
construct for collections).

i am sure you could come up with other designs as well. or you could
decide not to do it and then it would be implementation-specific. in
AtomPub's case, i think the reasoning was that in the majority of
scenarios, clients would just interact with existing collections, and for
managing collections themselves at a reasonable level of detail and
functionality, the protocol would have to become quite a bit bigger, and
all that additional complexity would see little coverage in most
real-world scenarios.

i think there is something to be said about the fact that managing
collections might be a different set of use cases, and maybe should be
pushed to version 2 or whatever comes after what we're currently doing.
for example, it is almost certain that managing collections often will
require a different level of access control and authorization, so maybe
not including this scenario would allow us to keep or eyes focused on the
simpler use cases of just interacting with existing collections.

cheers,

dret.

Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2012 22:39:41 UTC