Re: PUT

At 01:31 PM 1/15/2002 -0800, Mark Nottingham wrote:

>Micah,
>
>The REST [1][2] view of the Web architecture holds that there are a
>number of basic operations one can perform on resources (as
>identified by a URI);
>
>- GET it, to retreive a representation (e.g., an HTML page)
>- POST to it, to submit data to it (e.g., processing)
>- PUT it, to replace the state of the resource (so that future GETs
>   retrieve the entity sent in the PUT)
>- DELETE it, to remove it
>
>PUTing wasn't practical for traditional HTML forms, because the form
>encoding wasn't useful to refetch; instead, encoded form data was
>POSTed to a processor. However, it is potentially *very* useful to
>PUT xml instance data, in cases where it is useful to retrive that
>data later with a GET.

I have a somewhat different reading of Fielding's REST.  The R in
REST emphasizes the critical difference between the representation
of a resource obtained by GET and any underlying data.  Any
standard that pairs GET and PUT breaks this critical element of
web success. HTTP isn't a file system and that is a good thing.
The sad reality that we don't have good wide-area file systems
despite much work isn't a problem that forms should solve.

The appropriate pair for REST is GET/POST: even when the input
data looks to the client like some stuff the server ought to
store, that decision is the servers to make, always.


>Cheers,
>
>
>[1]
>http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs650/assignments/papers/p407-fielding.pdf
>[2] http://www.ebuilt.com/fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 10:10:30AM -0800, Micah Dubinko wrote:
> > Mark,
> >
> > The Working Group is examining this issue. I can't promise any particular
> > outcome, but it would be helpful if you could provide some use cases for
> > PUTting XML serialized instance data.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > .micah
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mark Nottingham [mailto:mnot@mnot.net]
> > Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 10:48 AM
> > To: www-forms@w3.org
> > Subject: PUT
> >
> >
> >
> > Is there any rationale for why XForms doesn't allow one to PUT an XML
> > instance [1]?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/slice4.html#structure-model-submitInfo
> >
> >
> > --
> > Mark Nottingham
> > http://www.mnot.net/
> >
>
>--
>Mark Nottingham
>http://www.mnot.net/
>

______________________________________________________
John J. Barton          email:  John_Barton@hpl.hp.com
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Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2002 12:03:04 UTC