Re: Few questions about REST

Hello Mark,

I'd like to ask few more questions.
First of all, I'd like to ask again about POST and GET. In one of your
earlier messages you said that REST does not prohibit using POST instead of
GET (for example, forms often use POST while submitting query information as
part of application/x-www-form-urlencoded content, may be because the
sequence is too long for GET). You also said that the only way to use POST
RESTfully while doing GET is to tunnel GET via POST.
So, can it be said that while REST does not require that POST is not used as
GET, it still requires/welcomes that some data in that POST includes a
uniform retrieval semantic for that POST to be (at least technically)
RESTful ?

Another question. If we have a request sent from a form  like

POST /PROPFIND (or SEARCH)
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
name=bar

which actually retrieves information, then can we say that PROPFIND (ort
SEARCH) is part of a generic interface (you referred to PROPFIND earlier).
If so, then can we say that a resource which this request is targeted to
supports both a uniform interface (POST, GET, etc) and a generic interface
like PROPFIND ? Is it OK to tunnel PROPFIND within POST ?
What use/help can it be to other components from a REST point of view if a
given component implements a generic interface like PROPFIND ?
Is generic interface is a constrained one ?

Sorry if it's all sounds confusing
Cheers
Sergey Beryozkin

Received on Tuesday, 4 November 2003 09:32:17 UTC