[uf-rest] REST opacity and URL schemes.

[David Heinemeier Hansson]

> * If "/books/4" represents the "record", the PUT would need to  
> contain _everything_ about that record; synthesizing additional  
> fields (like last modified) seems like 'cheating', and inconsistent  
> with PUT semantics

Could you tell me what other resources than http://www.w3.org/ 
Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html expand on this interpretation of  
PUT? My naive reading of 9.6 PUT seems to be that it talks all about  
updating and modifying. Not necessarily only complete replacements.  
But I'm new here, so perhaps I just have an incomplete picture.

I will say that PUT would seem a ton more useful if it didn't have as  
strict a usage pattern as you imply. If that's the case, PUT seems to  
be unusable for most web application purposes. And if that's the  
case, I really question whether its worth doing other-verbs-over-post  
mapping at all in Rails. Doesn't seem worth the trouble just to get  
DELETE.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson
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