On Dec 9, 2006, at 6:40 AM, Mark Baker wrote:
On 12/8/06, Asbjørn Ulsberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Both link relations are identical,
but the client has absolutely no clue before it GETs the URI
whether what
sits on the other end is an Atom Feed or an Atom Entry.
Nor should it need to distinguish
Asbjørn, the link is to the resource, not a particular representation
of it.
The media type is just a hint, what you get upon a GET can vary and
your client should prepare for that.
You can make use of that hint, but it does in no way tell you what the
actual media type is you'll get upon a GET; it is not authoritative,
the Content-Type header is.
What you can rely on is that the server uses the correct link
relation. IOW,
that the server informs you about the relationship correctly, that it
does not
tell you X is an alternate of A if it isn't.
Something else:
Suppose there were two representation formats for atom feeds one in
XML and
one in some space optimized text format. Conceptually they server up
the same
information - what type goes into the type attribute?
And yet in other words:
Media type are telling you hw to process a representation, not of
what kind the
resource is (resources are not typed, BTW).
Jan
