SEARCH reply and status

Suppose a server wants to return a response description that applies either
to the query result as a whole, or to the results of searching a particular
scope.  For example, it was searching three scopes, and an error arose with
just one of them, or suppose results were truncated for the query as a
whole.  The language we have now says that there is exactly a one to one
corrspondance between response items and matching resources, so there's no
place to put a status element.  (There *could* be a responsedescription,
but that's a natural language string, and the grammar allows only one of
those.  

I propose the following rewording of 2.4.1

The search proceeded successfully. The response matches that of a PROPFIND.
 There MUST be one dav:response for each resource that matched the search
criteria.  For each such response, the dav:href element contains the URI of
the resource, and the response MUST contain a dav:propstat element.  In
addition, there MAY be dav:response items in the reply where the dav:href
element contains a URI that is not a matching resource, e.g. that of a
scope or the query arbiter.  Each such response item MUST NOT contain a
dav:propstat element, and MUST contain a dav:status.  It SHOULD contain a
dav:responsedescription.

This would allow a server to indicate a problem with some resources while
still allowing clients to distinguish response elements that match the
query from those that merely convey status.

Is there any objection to this change?

Received on Friday, 19 June 1998 17:31:33 UTC