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

[Mike Schinkel]

Nick:

Just wanted to comment on this and thank you. These were extremely good and
eye-opening reads regarding the concept of "URI Opacity":
 
     <http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RestAndUriOpacity#nid1SK>
http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RestAndUriOpacity#nid1SK
     <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/3232>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/3232
 
-Mike

  _____  

From: microformats-rest-bounces at microformats.org
[mailto:microformats-rest-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf Of Nick Gall
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 6:27 PM
To: microformats-rest at microformats.org
Subject: [uf-rest] "Casual Web Services" and Well Designed Urls


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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