[uf-rest] Roy Fielding on WebDAV and PROPs

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi Dan,

On Apr 11, 2006, at 3:56 PM, Dan Kubb wrote:
>> The interesting question for me is what the "right" way to do  
>> properties would be over HTTP.  I presume it would require some  
>> sort of convention for a property namespace, which implies non- 
>> opaque URLs.  Which in term (in order to be RESTful) would require  
>> the *server* to have some way to tell clients about it, since  
>> clients shouldn't *assume* URI structure.
>
> I was thinking that the Link header from RFC 2068 would be a good
> fit for this.  There's a note at the end of RFC 2616 that it was
> obsoleted because it wasn't widely implemented.

Thanks, a very interesting point.  I was particularly intrigued by:

>>    The Link field is semantically equivalent to the <LINK> element  
>> in HTML.[5]

The question then becomes, is this better to implement in HTTP (where  
it is available for the entire site, a la WebDAV), or in the HTML  
(e.g., <link rel="properties">).

I'd lean towards the latter, as it seems more in keeping with  
Microformats philosophy, as well as being easier for clients to parse  
and interpret. Any reason to prefer it in HTTP?  If not, we might  
want to look into a relProperties microformat...

-- Ernie P.