- From: Henrik Frystyk Nielsen <frystyk@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 19:10:05 -0400
- To: ejw@ics.uci.edu, w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
At 13:12 4/19/99 -0700, Jim Whitehead wrote: >The rationale for the extra constraints on PUT in WebDAV is: > >* Prevention of creation of intermediate collections on user error. IMO, it seems out of bounce to impose a MUST requirement in order to prevent a "user error" - especially because the "error" doesn't break anything in the protocol or leads to interoperability problems. This is why it is stated as it is in HTTP/1.1 - it is left to the server to decide whether it wants to create the new location or not. As Yoram points out, some servers already do that and others don't. Removing the MUST requirement would also eliminate any problem with HTTP/1.1 clients - removing their capability of creating resources is in my mind not a good transition strategy. >For example: > >http://example.com/foo/fuzz/bar.html > >This URL would be free floating if you removed the "bar.html" path segment >to create: > >http://example.com/foo/fuzz/ > >AND if this URL is not mapped to a resource. But what if "http://example.com/foo/fuzz/" exists but isn't accessible to me because I don't have the right permissions. In that case, I may get a 403 (Forbidden) when accessing "http://example.com/foo/fuzz/" but still be able to create the document "http://example.com/foo/fuzz/bar.html". According to your definition, "http://example.com/foo/fuzz/bar.html" floats from my perspective so I have to do a MKCOL on "http://example.com/foo/fuzz/" - which of course I can't, because I am not allowed. This is the same as you often see on "incoming" folders on FTP servers where you can stick in a new file but not get a folder listing. Removing the MUST requirement would also take away this problem. In any case, 409 is not the appropriate status code to use - the two URIs you have in your example really aren't the same and the problem is not that there are any conflicts. Henrik -- Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, World Wide Web Consortium http://www.w3.org/People/Frystyk
Received on Monday, 19 April 1999 19:10:10 UTC