Re: Proposed issue: site metadata hook (slight variation)

Jeffrey Winter wrote,
> > But there's a crucial difference. My proposal (which is really only
> > a minor variation on Patricks) uses a _request_ header, to allow
> > clients to actively request metadata. The current distributed- 
> > registry proposal only allows servers to provide unsolicited
> metadata responses.
>
> The problem is that if you are using a GET with a Meta: header,
> then are you really getting a representation of the resource?  It
> seems to be stretching the semantics of the GET method.

Yes, a little. But only by the mutual consent of the client and the 
server. I guess this isn't a million miles away from the semantics of 
the HTTP Upgrade: header.

> Also, how do you PUT/DELETE/POST to that metadata, just using the
> Metadata: header? It seems morally equivalent to a set of M(XXXX)
> methods which has the same problem.

It _is_ the moral of Patricks M(XXX) methods ... but _without_ the 
problems ;-)

> The only issue with having the OPTIONS method return
> a Meta-Location: header is that it takes multiple requests
> to obtain the data, an OPTIONS request to get the uri of the
> metadata, and a GET on that uri to actually obtain it.  I see
> this as both beneficial and necessary.

I don't think that is the only issue. Support for OPTIONS is far less 
widespread than support for extension request/response headers.

Cheers,


Miles

Received on Wednesday, 12 February 2003 10:23:03 UTC