RE: post using non-http protocol in the action

Aaron,
As always you're raising interesting questions.

Here is my reading of the XForms 1.0 and 1.1 documents and my opinion.
I'm sure others who have a better or different understanding will
correct me where I've made mistakes.

In http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/slice11.html#submit-options it says
  For the URI scheme of action, XForms normatively defines a binding to
HTTP/1.1
And then says
  Other bindings, in particular to the URI scheme "mailto:" may, and the
schemes "https:" and "file:" should, be supported.
So should sounds like what you are aiming for.  The table doesn't define
PUT with file: but the text says
  Bindings to these schemes are not normatively defined in XForms.
So that means you're free to define POST with "file:" URIs, and that you
should follow the next sentence:
  Implementations that choose to provide a binding to these schemes
should pay particular attention to privacy and security concerns.
And I'm sure you're doing that ;-)

As for some other W3C recommendations better describing POST to file:,
we hope that someday the W3C Backplane will take on the task of defining
submission for all cooperating W3C specs, and that might be a good place
to have something other than http: normatively defined, in an extensible
manner.  See http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/2006/backplane/ for the last
public draft.

As for XForms 1.1, please see the Working Draft
http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms11/#submit and note new submission/@verb
submission/@resource, and submission/resource.  An understanding of
what's on the horizon in this area may help you plan on ways of reducing
work in any upcoming code changes in your implementation.

If you believe that file should be added to the URI Scheme list for
method="post" please say so in your comments on XForms 1.1.

Thank you,
Leigh.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: www-forms-request@w3.org [mailto:www-forms-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Aaron Reed
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 3:30 PM
To: www-forms@w3.org
Subject: post using non-http protocol in the action


Hi,

I'm looking at a behavior we have in Mozilla where if we detect a post 
but it isn't http, we toss a xforms-submit-error since we don't know how

post should behave with other protocols.  While this isn't exactly 
against spec, this behavior isn't common amongst other processors. 
XSmiles and formsPlayer seem to just handle the action.  For example, if

the form is loaded off the web but the action is local, the local file 
from the action is displayed when @replace="all" and when 
@replace="instance" the instance is replaced with the contents of the 
local file.  But this isn't perfectly consistent because if I load the 
same form locally and the action points to a local file formsPlayer will

throw a xforms-submit-error (I'm guessing this is a bug since it doesn't

do this when served from a server?).

So I guess I need to know:
1) is this a question I need to wait for the WG to resolve?  The 
question being, "what should 'post' do in non-http protocols?"  Is this 
actually handled in another spec?
2) is what XSmiles and formsPlayer do the norm for XForms 
implementations?  If so, is this the norm just for file protocol or will

all non-http protocols be handled this way?  Are XSmiles and formsPlayer

(and other processors) actually submitting anything or just building the

'post' without any data to post?  I guess I can't think of any other 
protocol that might use the data, but I am naive when it comes to 
emerging web stuff.  Could be things that might use the data that I'm 
missing.

Any guidance appreciated,
--Aaron

Received on Friday, 16 February 2007 18:27:03 UTC