Re: REST and HTTP Update

On 6 Oct 2009, at 20:25, Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:

> On Tuesday 6. October 2009 18:18:27 Steve Harris wrote:
>> This is compatible with PUT and POST semantics, and I believe that it
>> conforms to REST ideals, though that may be arguable.
>
> I may be pedantic, but it means you are modifying a resource with a
> different URI than the one you are POSTing and PUTting to. I'm not  
> sure,
> but I think this isn't RESTful...

I don't believe that I am modifying a resource with a different URI,  
but I may well be missing some subtlety.

In the example I gave, the modified resource is
http://localhost:8080/data/http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fdata.rdf

If this was a local copy of some remote data (which it is, in effect)  
then it would be a reasonable, RESTful URI for the local copy of the  
data, wouldn't it? If not, what would a RESTful URI for this local  
copy be?

I can GET, PUT and POST to this URI, so it's RESTful in that regard,  
I'm not modifying the resource <http://example.com/data.rdf>, as I  
have no way to write to it, even if I wanted to. In much the same way  
as someone who has a local copy of dbpedia.org can't modify that, only  
their local copy, which could be reflected through http://endpoint/dbpedia/ 
... or wherever.

Regardless, Chimezie's proposal allows for RESTful access (as I  
understand it), if the other operations, acting on cached graphs can  
be done RESTfully (as above, I believe) then that's good, if not, then  
so be it.

- Steve

-- 
Steve Harris
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Received on Tuesday, 6 October 2009 20:45:33 UTC