Re: collection with ordered members

Yes, you did suggest this before.  Your suggestion is that we don't need a
MKCOL method, but could simply use PUT or POST with multipart/related.  Say
we use PUT, and modify its behavior to require that whenever it gets a
multipart/related body it must create a collection.  Or define a new header
that would tell it to create a collection.  The only complexity I see here
is allowing for external members.  Would we have to define a Content-Type
to hold external references?

Suppose I want to create collection /root/Coll/ with the following members:
A (internal)
/root/elsewhere/X (external)
B (internal)

Would my request look like this?

PUT /root/Coll/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.myserver.com
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=xyz; type=text/plain
Content-Location: /root/Coll/
Object-Type: collection

--xyz
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Location: /root/Coll/A

some stuff
more stuff
more stuff

--xyz
Content-Type: text/x-ref

http://www.myserver.com/root/elsewhere/X

--xyz
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Location: /root/Coll/B

text text text
text text text

--xyz


Presumably even if we decide to define MKCOL, multipart/related could be
our standard entity body.

--Judy

At 03:02 PM 10/24/97 PDT, Larry Masinter wrote:
>> Or if you prefer it, we could define a body for PUT that servers should
>> understand as a compound document, assigning a URL to each component as
>> well as to the whole, and requiring them to support INDEX for these
>> documents.  We could define the headers to be used for ordering.  We could
>> define how MOVE, COPY, and DELETE work for such compound documents.  It
>> just seems more straightforward to work collections, since we've got all
>> these basic behaviors defined for them.
>
>(Did I send this before?)  'multipart/related' seems like the right
>body for PUT (or is it POST) that servers should understand as a
>compound document.
>
>It's exactly what is being used for POSTing related compound documents
>to email addresses, in the MHTML working group.
>
>Larry
>-- 
>http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 28 October 1997 12:37:32 UTC