RE: HTTP Endpoints and Resources

> From: Ed Davies [mailto:edavies@nildram.co.uk] 
> 
> Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote:
> > ...
> > What the 200 and 303 cases have in common is that the
> > server's response indicates that the URI owner has associated
> > the URI with a resource, i.e., the URI owner has "minted" or
> > "allocated" the URI. (Slight digression: hence the server's
> > response can be viewed as "declaring"[3] that URI.) ...
>
> Is this actually true for a 303? Suppose some joker sends you
> the URI:
>
>    http://t-d-b.org?http://edavies.me.uk/1907/wibble
>
> and you wonder if I, the URI owner (by delegation [1]), has
> really associated a resource with this rather odd looking URI.
> You do a GET on it and get a 303 response back. [ . . . ]

I think it is true for a 303, because by redirecing you somewhere else,
the 303 is acknowledging that there is a resource associated with the
URI.  In the t-d-b.org case above, the URI owner is t-d-b.org, but
because http://edavies.me.uk/1907/wibble does not return any content,
the URI owner has not told you what resource it is that
http://t-d-b.org?http://edavies.me.uk/1907/wibble denotes.  

However, I guess there isn't much difference in practice between a URI
that has not been associated with a resource (i.e., minted) and a URI
that denotes a completely unknown resource, so one could look at it
either way.

And BTW, the 303 response by itself does not constitute the complete
"URI declaration"[3] that I mentioned.  Rather it is one component (the
speech act) in the URI declaration.  In the example you gave above,
there would not have been a complete declaration of 
http://t-d-b.org?http://edavies.me.uk/1907/wibble , because
http://edavies.me.uk/1907/wibble does not return any content.


> [1] http://thing-described-by.org/

> [3] URI declarations: http://dbooth.org/2007/uri-decl/


David Booth, Ph.D.
HP Software
+1 617 629 8881 office  |  dbooth@hp.com
http://www.hp.com/go/software

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent
the official views of HP unless explicitly stated otherwise.
 

Received on Friday, 28 September 2007 04:15:54 UTC