RE: Can "http://danbri.org" and "http://danbri.org/" URIs represent different things?

Hi Dan,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf
> Of ext Dan Brickley
> Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 8:54 PM
> To: www-tag@w3.org WG
> Subject: Can "http://danbri.org" and "http://danbri.org/" URIs
> represent different things?
> 
> Hello TAG,
> 
> Talking with some SW folk about OpenID, and whether my "me-the-person"
> URI could be practically usable as my OpenID, I came up with this
> corner-case:
> 
> Could http://danbri.org be a URI for "me the person", and
> http://danbri.org/ be a document about me (and also serve as my
> OpenID)?

This latter URI would make a fine OpenID, as long as an OpenID provider of your choice can assert that the URI is "under your control". In the case you describe, that URI might use OpenID delegation [1] to provide a link to an OpenID provider not directly run by you.

> 
> As I understand HTTP, any client must request something, so the former
> isn't directly de-referencable. The client has to decide to ask for /
> from danbri.org instead. But they're still different URIs, aren't they?

RFC2616 section 3.2.2 [2] says that an HTTP URI with an empty path component must be "given as" a URI with a path component of "/". 

OpenID itself would also find the two URIs to be equivalent for the purposes of OpenID (in that the OpenID provider must follow all redirects and apply RFC 3986 - and, hence, also HTTP URI scheme-specific rules to "normalize" the name [3])

- johnk

[1] http://www.windley.com/archives/2007/02/using_openid_delegation.shtml
[2] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#page-18
[3] http://openid.net/specs/openid-authentication-2_0.html#normalization


> 
> Is...
> 
> <Person  xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1"/
>           rdf:about="http://danbri.org">
>   <openid>
>      <Document rdf:about="http://danbri.org/"/>
>   </openid>
> </Person>
> 
> ...at all feasible? I guess it depends on how exactly we think about
> the
> "add a / to the end" step...
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Dan

Received on Wednesday, 1 July 2009 02:17:00 UTC