- From: Yaron Goland <yarong@microsoft.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 17:54:54 -0800
- To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
Documents have structure and it would seem a good thing for DAV to expose this structure and make it available for manipulation. As such I propose a new Method, STRUCTURE. When executed on a resource this method will return a description of the structure of the document. I recommend that the structure of a resource be expressed as a list of URIs, some relative, some not, along with associated meta-data. The STRUCTURE method returns this list. One method for adding to the structure of a document is to PUT a new resource, where the request-URI has the same base as the structure resource. Thus if the structured resource is http://foo then http://foo/bar specifies a member of foo's structure. In addition if the resource only has a single entry then either an empty STRUCTURE may be returned or a structure with one entry whose URI equals the Request-URI. Clients should be aware of the possibilities of a loop. There are times when it would be useful to be able to group together URIs who are independent of the structured resource's URI. A classic example is a linked (using the file system definition) file in a directory. As such I propose the new link type "ResourceLink". The source of this link type is always the request-URI of the collection and the destination is the URI to be included in the structure. When such a link is defined, its value should be returned as part of the result from a STRUCTURE method. I also propose that the structured resource mechanism be used to implement collections and that the AddResource and RemoveResource methods should be stricken from the spec. The STRUCTURE method will then provide the BROWSE method functionality that a number of members of the group have asked for. I look forward to the group's comments, Yaron
Received on Monday, 17 March 1997 20:54:59 UTC