XForms:instance requests, the HTTP Accept header and RESTful Web Services...

I'm working on a XForms demo that combines XML content editing and
RESTful Web Services.

Whilst looking at the HTTP request headers sent by an xforms:instance
request by the Mozilla XForms plug-in I noticed that the server gets the
same 'Accept' header whether it comes from a hyper-link in the host
XHTML page or from an XForms instance request:

<a href="objects/0901047880012b9b" title="example xhtml content"
type="text/html">...</a>

 or

<xforms:instance xmlns="" id="content"
src="../objects/0901047880012b9b"/>

 sends

text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plai
n;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5


Given that XForms is designed for editing well-formed XML, should it not
be the case that an XForms implementation should declare to the server
that it only accepts XML. Now I'd admit that just sending 'text/xml' in
the 'Accept' header is probably too narrow, but something along these
lines would allow a server that uses pre-emptive content negotiation to
return an XML representation of a concept to the XForm and an XHTML
(preview) representation to a hyper-link from the host XHTML page.
Otherwise, I cannot see how XForms can operate within a RESTful Web
Service where content negotiation is used to serve appropriate
representations from opaque URLs.



Regards

Philip Fennell
>XSLT Developer (Content Management Culture)
>
>BBC Future Media & Technology
>Media Village, 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TP 
>BC4 C4, Broadcast Centre
>
>T:	0208 0085318
>

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Received on Friday, 28 September 2007 19:19:30 UTC