Re: URI Templates - optional variables?

To jump in for a second (agreeing with at least half the people on this
thread):

One of the big wins I think we got with the OpenSearch URL templates was
their readability, and write-ability, for humans without tools.

Consider this:

  http://example.com/search?q={searchTerms}&num={count}<http://example.com/search?q=%7BsearchTerms%7D&num=%7Bcount%7D>

Quick -- tell me what that template describes.  I bet you can.  And I bet
you could create one by hand.

Granted Joe's proposed URL template specification is far more general in its
expressiveness.  But it is also already starting to feel overly complex.  If
it gets even more complex I'm afraid we'll have lost most of the audience of
real people who build the bulk of the world's web applications.

My feeling these days is if I need a tool to help me parse/understand
something, I best move on to something that can better fit inside my limited
brain.

-DeWitt


On 10/16/07, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net> wrote:
>
>
> Sorry, typo; that should be "2K" (although I think 1K will be
> achieved before too long).
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> On 17/10/2007, at 7:11 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On 17/10/2007, at 3:06 AM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> >
> >>> Ceterum censeo: in my view the templates would benefit from an
> >>> easier readable syntax.
> >>
> >> Easy to read by whom?  I went through the readable bits with HTTP
> >> and it turned out to be a big mistake.  Nobody reads HTTP in real
> >> practice, yet the overhead of parsing HTTP messages is huge.
> >
> > I do, and my developers do; it greatly helps them understand and
> > debug the protocol.
> >
> > WRT parsing overhead -- commodity hardware can easily saturate a
> > gigabit Ethernet with 1K responses to GETs. "Huge" is an
> > overstatement.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > --
> > Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/
>
>
>