RE: Proposal for marshalling property type information

> From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Tim_Ellison@uk.ibm.com
> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 3:51 PM
> To: WebDAV WG
> Subject: RE: Proposal for marshalling property type information

Hi Tim,

thanks for the feedback.

> > 5. Changes for PROPFIND method
> >
> >    PROPFIND is extended to return the data type information for
> >    properties that satisfy the following conditions:
> >
> >    o  The data type is different from "xs:string".
> >
> >    o  The property's data type is not defined in [RFC2518] or a related
> >       specification.
>
> This seems too strict, how about servers MAY excluse the data type
> attributes where ...

The idea was to be specific here to avoid "polluting" PROPFIND replies with
unnecessary information (as seen, for instance, in IIS).

> > 6. Compatibility Considerations
> >    ...
> >    Servers not aware of this specification either drop the "xsi:type"
> >    attribute, or persist it along with the property value.  However,
> >    they will never indicate successfull parsing of the data type by
> >    returning back the type in the response to PROPPATCH.
>
> Huh?  If it is persisted as an attribute why would the server not
> return it
> in PROPFIND?
> Are you suggesting that aervers should ignore unknown attributes?

I think you misread.

PROPPATCH, when a datatype was supplied and recognized, is going to report
that by adding it to it's response body:

"The server should indicate successfull detection and parsing of the typed
value by setting the xsi:type attribute on the property element in the
response body.".

An old server will never do this upon PROPPATCH. So this remark applies to
PROPPATCH, not a subsequent PROPFIND.

> Apart from that, the proposal seems straight forward enough.

Thanks.

Do you think it would be worthwhile to extend this for passing arrays (I've
got a proposal for using the SOAP encoding ready...)?

Julian

Received on Tuesday, 12 June 2001 13:24:39 UTC