Re: quick advice on content negotiation

On Dec 8, 2009, at 11:52 AM, Toby Inkster wrote:
> An important question not answered in your message is: what is the URI
> <http://example.org/user/23> supposed to identify?
>
> If it identifies a particular person, then this behavious semantically
> problematic. Why? Because a web server should never respond "200 OK"
> to a request for a URI identifying a person, unless it intends to
> physically chop the person up and pass him/her down the wire to the
> receiving user agent.
>
> If the URI <http://example.org/user/23> is supposed to identify,
> say, a person's profile, and you have a different URI to represent
> the person themselves (e.g. <http://example.org/user/23#me>) then
> the connection negotiation setup you describe is fine.


I don't agree.

What is the MIME type for a person?

200 OK is tied to a combination of URI *and* Accept: (and other)
headers.  Not just the URI.

I can absolutely GET the URI for you, the person, with a 200 OK
response -- *if* I have requested an available and transmissable
*representation* of that URI.  (And the response should include
headers explicitly describing which representation I'm GETting.)

Be seeing you,

Ted



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Received on Tuesday, 8 December 2009 17:07:41 UTC