Re: MKCOL for making collections

On 22 Jan 2013, at 16:35, Alexandre Bertails <bertails@w3.org> wrote:

> On 01/22/2013 10:17 AM, Steve Speicher wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
>>> ISSUE-36: Can applications create new containers?
>>> 
>>> We cannot make a collection by POSTing a doument on a collection, since that
>>> creates a resource. We therefore would need a different HTTP Method to do this.
>>> 
>> 
>> Why can't we do this?  A Container/Collection IS a resource.  So
>> therefore POST'ing the representation of it seems like the most
>> obvious way to create one.
> 
> I agree with Henry's premises: this way of creating containers should
> be discussed. The reason is that this strategy forces you to look into
> each RDF document that is POSTed, to search for the triples saying
> "hey, by the way, I'm an LDPC!".
> 
> It's not that it's impossible, it's just very annoying in practice. So
> it's at least not perfect.

Thanks :-) I was just writing this up.

Next interesting enough would be the question as to whether a link would
do to a special resource for creating a collection in your collection. 
You could have

<> ldp:createCollection <xxx> .

But now what is xxx ? It cannot be something you can add attributes to 
like <xxx?name=pix> to create a collection and that then you can send
a GET to. Because GET is indempotent and you'd be in danger of crawlers
creating collections all over the place.

If is something you POST to to create a collection, then is it not 
an ldp:Container? But if it is an ldp:Container then it's a bit odd
that you are POSTing to another ldp:Container, in order to create a 
new container in your collection.

My guess is that it is reasoning of that type that led to the creation
of the MKCOL method.
 

> 
> Alexandre.
> 
>> 
>>> I suggest MKCOL from WebDAV, since it is already defined.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>    http://restpatterns.org/HTTP_Methods/MKCOL
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The content of the body, could be Triples that describe things
>>> that can be put into the collection. As it happens that is not
>>> defined yet it seems, so we can define it.
>>> 
>>>   Any thoughts on that?  I'll try implementing that.
>>> 
>> 
>> Seems like we'd have to dig into more of what the semantics of that
>> verb says [1] but feels a little like we'd have to adapt more of
>> WebDAV instead of just reusing the verb and giving it our own special
>> meaning.
>> 
>> [1] - http://www.webdav.org/specs/rfc2518.html#METHOD_MKCOL
>> 
>>> Henry
>>> 
>>> Social Web Architect
>>> http://bblfish.net/
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> - Steve
>> 
>> 
> 
> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/