Re: redirects and relative URLs

On 29 January 2012 14:42, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
>
> On 29 Jan 2012, at 14:29, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>> On 29 January 2012 14:12, Henry Story <henry.story@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 29 Jan 2012, at 14:03, John Erickson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Henry asked:
>>>>> If I dereference a URL which contains a redirect to another resource, and that
>>>>> resource contains relative URLs, how should the relative URLs of the returned
>>>>> document be completed? With the initial URL? Or with the one given in the Location
>>>>> header (or some other header?) of the last document?
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps this has been written up somewhere?
>>>>
>>>> Doesn't RFC 3986 <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt> speak to this?
>>>>
>>>> 5.1.3.  Base URI from the Retrieval URI
>>>>
>>>> If no base URI is embedded and the representation is not encapsulated
>>>> within some other entity, then, if a URI was used to retrieve the
>>>> representation, that URI shall be considered the base URI.  Note that
>>>> if the retrieval was the result of a redirected request, the last URI
>>>> used (i.e., the URI that resulted in the actual retrieval of the
>>>> representation) is the base URI.
>>>
>>> Thanks John,
>>>
>>>   that is really important. It is easy to get this wrong. Some tools like
>>> Apache's HTTP client do such a good job at redirecting that it is easy to
>>> miss this.
>>>
>>> Here is the HTTP version of the RFC.
>>>
>>>   http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-5.1.3
>>>
>>> Just forwarding this to WebID Community Group [1], as of course this is
>>> very important there, since it would make a big difference as to what is
>>> considered the WebID finally.
>>
>> A WebID is a simply URI that represents a person.
>
> You mean "a WebID _refers_to_ a Person". A representation is
> something very different. It is a document, that contains
> things like URLs.

Sorry yes, a webid points to a representation of a person.

>
>> Important not to confuse what a WebID is, with any particular
>> verification pattern.
>
> It does not matter what the verification pattern is. If the WebID appears
> in a document which has relative URLs and you need to know what WebIDs
> these relative URLs _resolve_to_,  to use language from RFC3986, you need
> among other things to know what the HTTP Location headers said. Information
> inside the document can make a difference too, but all rdf parsers know about
> that.

Ah I see what you're trying to do.  You're trying to work out if
something is a WebID, rather than, if a WebID is valid.  That makes
sense.

>
> Henry
>
>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  Henry
>>>
>>> PS. The WebID Incubator Group just switched to a community Group
>>>    http://www.w3.org/community/webid/
>>>  Please feel free to join the community!
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
>>>> Director, Web Science Operations
>>>> Tetherless World Constellation (RPI)
>>>> <http://tw.rpi.edu> <olyerickson@gmail.com>
>>>> Twitter & Skype: olyerickson
>>>
>>> Social Web Architect
>>> http://bblfish.net/
>>>
>>
>
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
>

Received on Sunday, 29 January 2012 17:05:17 UTC