Jeff Walter <jeffinmotion <at> gmail.com> writes: > > Hey All,Little philosophical/architectural question here...
Hello Interesting question; I'll try to provide a possible answer by sketching the way I build my application. Basically I've a rich client application (Flex) accessing (create, modify, view) various resources on the server. These resources are exactly all the "objects" that can be manipulated within the application. I considered each resource as being kind of a "virtual web page", with one URI and one (or several if required) "layouts" (representations). The application accesses the required resources, and assembles them for display. To be a little more specific, my resources' representation currently rely on atom (which is indeed a generic resource format, blogs being only a specific and restrained use; other formats may be used, rss, custom xml, etc): when the client GETs a resource, it receives an atom feed, and it applies to it a display template, corresponding to the way that resource's representation should be presented to the user in the current context of the application (eg the application is made of interacting zones, each one displaying a template populated by a resource's representation). An important point is that each resource includes links to all other resources it is logically linked to: the client has absolutly NO knowledge of the links between resources, it virtually navigates between them as needed. If A is linked to A and B, when the client accesses A it receives its representation, including a link to B and a link to C; then if the client wants to access B it uses that link (equivalent to a human "clicking" on a link). The navigation logic (links) is part of the resources (=controller), each resource is published to the application/browser using a representation format, the application/browser aggregates a meaningful and "pretty" display of several resources representation. Example: think of iTunes. Your songs and playlist are resources, as well as authors, music types, albums, etc, all linked together. iTMS online content is also a set of similar resources. All of them are represented in a XML format specific to Apple; iTunes is responsible for displaying several resources at the same time, allowing navigation between navigation, switching views, etc. I hope this makes sense. Regards
