RE: Trailing slashes for collections

Section 5.2 contains the following text:

   That is, the internal member URI is equal to a
   containing collection's URI plus an additional segment for non-
   collection resources, or additional segment plus trailing slash "/"
   for collection resources, where segment is defined in section 3.3 of
   [RFC2396].

This defines the name of a collection as a URI ending in a "/". Please note,
this doesn't mean that any URI ending in a "/" is a collection. Only that if
it is a collection then its name MUST end in a "/". 

That is why the first sentence in the paragraph you quote reads:

   There is a standing convention that when a collection is referred to
   by its name without a trailing slash, the trailing slash is
   automatically appended.  

The point we are making is that a collection's name ends in a "/" but for
convenience sake we will often map names without the slash to ones with the
slash. This is why the same paragraph contains the requirement:

   In this case it
   SHOULD return a content-location header in the response pointing to
   the URI ending with the "/".  

That is, the server is saying to the client "I accepted the name without the
slash but you need to understand that the real name, as returned in the
content-location header, has a slash."

Jim, could you please add an issue to the issue list that we need to state
explicitly that collection names end in a "/". Could you also please add an
issue that we need to put in a SHOULD level requirement that servers return
a name with a "/" in the HREF XML element for collections?

		Thanks,
			Yaron

P.S. The use of the content-location header in this context, although
technically correct, still bugs me.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Orton [mailto:joe@orton.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Wed, July 07, 1999 4:13 PM
> To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> Subject: Trailing slashes for collections
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry, picking nits a bit here maybe: the paragraph about trailing
> slashes in sec 5.2 of 2518 makes it explicit that clients SHOULD use
> trailing slashes for collections, but not servers.  Servers return
> collection URIs in e.g. the DAV:href element, and these 'SHOULD' have
> trailing slashes too?
> 
> joe
>

Received on Thursday, 8 July 1999 13:05:47 UTC