- From: Clemm, Geoff <gclemm@rational.com>
- Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 08:54:06 -0400
- To: Webdav WG <w3c-dist-auth@w3c.org>
I strongly object to adding a MUST for servers returning slash terminated URLs for collections. Most repositories do not allow trailing segment-separator characters in the segment name of a resource, and therefore these trailing segment-separator characters are commonly just stripped off before that segment name is stored in the repository. This means that in order to decide whether to add the segement-separator character back on, the implementation must query the repository for the type of each resource identified by that segment. Forcing this cost on the server is only justified if it provides some compelling benefit to the client. The only concrete motivation I have heard for making this requirement is to save a 302 redirect round trip for a client when the server redirects a GET request on a collection to an internal member of the request-URL (e.g. redirects "GET /foo" to "GET /foo/index.html"). Having the trailing slash present in the request-URL allows the server to silently redirect the request to the internal member of the request-URL without breaking client-side relative reference processing. But no WebDAV methods other than GET is redirected in this fashion, and WebDAV clients will commonly not be doing a GET on a collection (they will be doing a PROPFIND, and use the results to construct a display), and so the overall benefit to a client of avoiding a redirect on a GET to a collection is significantly outweighed by the server cycles being wasted to determine whether or not a collection member is a collection. If a client cares whether or not a resource is a collection, it can do a PROPFIND for its DAV:resourcetype. That way, server cycles are spent only when needed. Cheers, Geoff -----Original Message----- From: Lisa Dusseault [mailto:lisa@xythos.com] Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2002 2:14 PM Subject: Issues from Interop/Interim WG Meeting ... - Servers must use trailing slash whenever collection URLs are returned. Language proposed for 2518 bis ...
Received on Monday, 16 September 2002 09:24:13 UTC