RE: Re-post: Request JSON-LD with embedded or referenced context

Hi John,

I think you didn’t get a reply to your mail below yet. Right?


On Saturday, April 05, 2014 7:42 AM, John Walker wrote:
> Following on from a Twitter exchange with Manu, Markus and Gregg where
> I asked about best practices regarding embedding or referencing to a
> context in a JSON-LD document.
> I wondered if there is any way for a client to indicate a preference
> for embedded or referenced context when making a request?

No, currently there isn't.


> Having read the IANA Considerations chapter of the JSON-LD
> recommendation [1] I'm none the wiser.
>   
> Would it be useful to add more values for the profile parameter that
> would allow the client to indicate a preference:
> -    http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#embedded 
> -    http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#referenced 

I'm not sure. I see how it *might* help in certain use cases but in general I would say this goes too far. Generally, decisions like these should, IMHO, be at the sole discretion of the server. Every option/feature you adds implementation complexity and costs (cache rates go down etc.).

If you really need such a feature to fine tune your applications performance, you can of course mint URLs for this. If we see that people will use this a lot, we might include it in the next version of JSON-LD. At the moment, however, I have so say I'm reluctant to do so.


> These could either be used in combination with the URI
> http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#compacted, but just specifying either of
> these should be enough to infer that compacted form is preferred.
>   
> Also when requesting compacted document form, how does a client
> indicate the context which should be used to compact the JSON-LD
> response?

It doesn't. The server decides how to compact. If the client prefers another context, it simply re-compacts the document with its desired context.


> I could imagine the URI of the context might be included in the list
> of URIs for the profile parameter, or perhaps supplied in a HTTP Link
> Header using the http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#context link relation.
> The latter is probably less ambiguous.

Why do you want to push that complexity to the server? Why don't you simply request expanded document form an compact it locally?


--
Markus Lanthaler
@markuslanthaler

Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:36:04 UTC