Re: GET should be encouraged, not deprecated,in XForms

"David E. Cleary" wrote:
> 
> > GET means something different than POST. It has superpowers like
> > bookmark-ability for a reason.
> 
> Thanks to you and Matt Baker, I see the other side of the argument more
> clearly. Since the big issue for deprecating GET was the fact it is not well
> suited for sending hierarchical data, how about this as a solution.
> 
> 1. Do not deprecate GET.
> 2. Require your XML Instance Data to be flat when using GET.
> 3. Require your instance data to be flat when using
> application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Based on my limited knowledge of XForms outside of the HTTP bits, that
sounds reasonable. There are also i18n considerations that need to be
considered. And there is the issue that the XForms algorithm doesn't
seem able to produce URLs that are the same as the HTML forms algorithm
which will cause backwards compatibility headaches. 

And if we're looking at XForms from an HTTP and web architecture
perspective there are three more minor things I'd like to see.

 * support for PUT (and DELETE??)
 * support for sending arbitrary HTTP headers
 * support for generating target URIs as templates similar to the way
you generate XML as templates

Basically if you look at an HTTP message the four things you care about
are method, location, headers and body. XForms is strong on body but the
other things are important too. None so important as the method,
however!

 Paul Prescod

Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 16:45:11 UTC