Re: [w3c/manifest] Add a unique identifier for a PWA (#586)

I remember this topic being debated at some length in the sysapps working group in about 2013. My personal opinion has always been that the manifest URI alone should be treated as the identifier of a web application and a different manifest URI should be assumed to be a different application.

Some of the reasons being:
1. It provides a simple URI as an identifier to use as an index in a database of apps, which also happens to resolve to the metadata describing the app
2. The manifest URI can be resolved periodically by the user agent to check for updates
3. No ambiguity over whether two applications within the same origin/sharing the same start_url/sharing the same scope/claiming the same internal ID are the same app or different apps

In [implementing](https://github.com/webianproject/shell/blob/master/chrome/shared/js/services/WebApp.js) the manifest specification recently I found it a real pain trying to use some kind of combination of the origin/start URL/manifest URL/content hash as an identifier and in the end gave up and just used the manifest URL anyway.

I understand why people might want to version the manifest URL and caching is indeed hard, but I would argue there are other solutions to that problem. [Cool URI's don't change](https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI).

-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/586#issuecomment-607873237