[uf-rest] "Casual Web Services" and Well Designed Urls

[Nick Gall]

*Etan Wexler* wrote to Microformats Discuss:
>REST does not permit programmatic construction of URIs in which the
>construction uses of out-of-band knowledge and bits of data.

I'm sorry, but this is flat out wrong. Nothing in REST, nothing in WWW
architecture, and certainly nothing in Roy T Fielding's dissertation forbids
constructing URIs based on "out of band documentation". This is one of the
most pernicious misunderstandings of web architecture that I feel compelled
to help stamp it out.

Here's what RTF has to say on the matter (see
http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RestAndUriOpacity#nid1SK):

"REST does not require that a URI be opaque. The only place where the word
opaque occurs in my dissertation is where I complain about the opaqueness of
cookies. In fact, RESTful applications are, at all times, encouraged to use
human-meaningful, hierarchical identifiers in order to maximize the
serendipitous use of the information beyond what is anticipated by the
original application."
(1SK)<http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RestAndUriOpacity#nid1SK>

-- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/3232
(1SL)<http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RestAndUriOpacity#nid1SL>
And here is what the W3C TAG currently has to say about it:
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/metaDataInURI-31.

In short, the only time a URI should be considered opaque is when the person
looking at it has no documentation or code (eg a FORM element) to support
their speculation of what the components of the URI might mean. To put it
simply: URI's mean only what authorized code or documentation says what they
mean (and how they can be composed); don't speculate from the text embedded
in the URI what the rules are for composing such a URI.

-- Nick

-- 
Nick Gall
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