Re: GET on a reference

>My proposal is that GET, HEAD, PUT, or POST on a reference
>should return 302 (Moved Temporarily), with the Location:
>header indicating the target URI of the reference.

That is only one of the two possible things an author might want
to happen, the other being an internal redirect that makes it seem
like the resource has a "copy" at that URI.  For example, Apache supports
both internal and external redirects in its namespace configuration,
with only the latter being visible to the client.

This would seem to indicate that such a feature should be an option
for the MKREF method, rather than being artificially restricted by
the protocol.

>also include some DAV-specific header, indicating that the
>resource is a reference, so that a DAV-aware client would
>understand that the redirection was being done through DAV
>(as opposed to some server-specific configuration).

You should elaborate as to why there needs to be any such distinction.

It would be nice if a reference-only resource had a property that
distinguished it as such, but I doubt anything else is necessary.

....Roy

Received on Thursday, 25 June 1998 20:36:08 UTC