Re: Make p:http-request required?

On 5/7/07, Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> wrote:
>
>
> Alex Milowski wrote:
> > On 4/30/07, *Norman Walsh* <ndw@nwalsh.com <mailto:ndw@nwalsh.com>>
> wrote:
> >     I propose that we move [p:http-request] to the "required" pile.
> >
> > + 1 to that!!!
>
> Are there any security considerations that we need to worry about?
>
> I don't really understand how p:http-request works (as in the 30th April
> draft). It doesn't seem to be a standard atomic step, since it has
> attributes that correspond to options. Shouldn't its signature be more
> like:
>
> <p:declare-step type="p:http-request">
>    <p:input port="request-entity" sequence="no"/>
>    <p:output port="response-status" sequence="no" />
>    <p:output port="response-headers" sequence="no"/>
>    <p:output port="response-entity" sequence="no" />
>    <p:option name="href" required="yes" />
>    <p:option name="method" required="no" value="GET" />
>    <p:option name="http-version" required="no" value="1.1" />
>    <p:param name="*" />
> </p:declare-step>



I'm going to come back to this  definition as I'm not sure
I'm being clear.

In the above step declaration, we're missing headers as an input.  I presume
we'd use parameters to set the headers.

That means that if I have a preceding transformation step that produces
the request, it can't quite easily set the headers.  I'd then have to
produce an ancillary document from which I bind parameters.

If we add an input for headers, then we're at 2 inputs and 3 outputs versus
the
1 input and 1 output I originally had thought about.

Further, the output of the step is really processed based on the status
of the response.  That means one of the three outputs (request-status)
would have to be inspected to see if the others should be processed.

Further, the response may not have a entity body.  That means you can't
easily check the response to see if you had a body because that output
port wouldn't produce anything.

This seems very complex to me.  Much more complex than a single
document that encodes the response.

-- 
--Alex Milowski
"The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the
inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language
considered."

Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics