Re: Inconsistencies in Discovery methods

On Feb 6, 2009, at 4:03 PM, Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:
> On 2/6/09 11:03 AM, "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:
>
>> There are many resources involved in HTTP,
>> only one of which is identified by the requested URI.  Each of those
>> resources may have representations, and the meaning of the payload  
>> in a
>> response message is defined by the status code.  A 404 response is  
>> going
>> to contain a representation of a resource on the server that  
>> describes
>> that error. A 200 response is going to contain a representation of  
>> the
>> resource that was identified as the request target.
>
> What this means is that a Link header in the HTTP response to a GET  
> request
> might not be about the resource identified by the URI used to make  
> that
> request.

The Link header field defines what it is about: [RFC2068]

    The Link entity-header field provides a means for describing a
    relationship between two resources, generally between the requested
    resource and some other resource.

It says "requested resource" there for a reason.  It seems that has
been muddled a bit in Mark's draft, probably because you guys have had
too many discussions about what it could mean.

If you think it would be helpful to distinguish the Link header
field (resource metadata) from a Content-Link header field
(representation metadata), then that is a separate discussion.

....Roy

Received on Wednesday, 11 February 2009 01:12:06 UTC