Re: Strawman Proposal: Web Thing Protocol HTTP Sub-protocol

Dear Web Thing Protocol Community Group members,

In relation to my strawman proposal
<https://w3c.github.io/web-thing-protocol/proposals/http-subprotocol/> for
the Web Thing Protocol HTTP sub-protocol I would like to share a blog post
<https://tola.me.uk/blog/2026/03/05/putting-the-web-back-in-the-web-of-things/>
I
published yesterday which explains in detail the reasons I think this is so
important to the future of the Web of Things.

The blog post provides a deep-dive retrospective into the last 10+ years of
Web of Things standardisation, how the Web of Things is being used today,
and why I believe a universal HTTP-based application layer protocol is an
essential missing component that will help unlock the full potential of the
Web of Things.

An HTTP "sub-protocol" is one of the key deliverables in the charter
<https://w3c.github.io/web-thing-protocol/charter/> of our group and we
have already specified the requirements
<https://www.w3.org/community/reports/web-thing-protocol/CG-FINAL-web-thing-protocol-requirements-20231101/#http-sub-protocol>
for it in our Use Cases & Requirements Report.

I hope to start work on adding that that sub-protocol to the Web Thing
Protocol specification <https://w3c.github.io/web-thing-protocol/> soon,
piece by piece so that we can carefully review each part.

I welcome feedback on my strawman proposal, and volunteers who are
interested in contributing to writing, reviewing, implementing or testing
this important deliverable.

We will also continue to refine the WebSocket sub-protocol
<https://w3c.github.io/web-thing-protocol/#websocket-messages> that has
already been defined, based on implementation feedback.

Many thanks

Ben

On Mon, 24 Nov 2025 at 16:46, Ben Francis <ben@krellian.com> wrote:

> Dear Web Thing Protocol Community Group members,
>
> We recently published a first draft of the Web Thing Protocol WebSocket
> Sub-protocol <https://w3c.github.io/web-thing-protocol/>, which is one of
> the two main deliverables in our charter
> <https://w3c.github.io/web-thing-protocol/charter/>.
>
> The other main deliverable in our charter is the definition of an "HTTP
> sub-protocol for the Web of Things". The idea of this sub-protocol is to
> create a common protocol for communicating with connected devices over
> HTTP, enabling consumers to carry out the full set of WoT operations
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/wot-thing-description11/#table-well-known-operation-types>
> using the familiar pattern of a REST API (i.e. the same as our WebSocket
> sub-protocol, but using plain HTTP).
> I have created a very rough strawman proposal
> <https://w3c.github.io/web-thing-protocol/proposals/http-subprotocol/>
> which defines an HTTP sub-protocol (alongside the current WebSocket
> sub-protocol) that is essentially a combination of the common HTTP Basic
> Profile <https://www.w3.org/TR/wot-profile/#http-basic-profile> and HTTP
> SSE Profile <https://www.w3.org/TR/wot-profile/#http-sse-profile>
> protocol bindings from the WoT Profiles specification, with Server-Sent
> Events <https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/server-sent-events.html>
> (SSE) being used for event-based operations like observeproperty and
> subscribeevent.
>
> Please see this issue
> <https://github.com/w3c/web-thing-protocol/issues/116> on GitHub for more
> background information and discussion. I would love to hear what you think.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Ben
>
> --
> Ben Francis
> Founder
> Krellian Ltd. <https://krellian.com>
>
>
>
>