Bojan and Aaron, I wanted to touch base on the REST project status, based on recent developer discussions of this project. I've also decided to include the entire 'dspace-gsoc-student' and 'dspace-devel' lists, as others may want to add comments. I hope you don't mind having this discussion publicly (as it helps us all to better understand your work).
In DSpace Developer Meetings over the past two weeks, we have been discussing whether or not to include the REST API work as part of the upcoming DSpace 1.7 release (scheduled for December, with a feature freeze on Oct 22). So, I wanted to touch base with both of you on the GSoC project status (especially since GSoC is wrapping up shortly). Developer Meeting Archives (if you wanted to see the recent discussion): https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Developer+Meeting+Archives A few questions/comments have come up during our developer discussions of the REST project and its current documentation on the wiki: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/GSOC10+-+DSpace+REST+API (1) We noticed that the REST API documentation on the wiki currently doesn't mention anything about Authentication. How is authentication expected to be handled (or being handled)? Is it just Basic HTTP Auth? Is there any extra configuration/setup that should be documented on the wiki page? It might be good to document how authentication is expected to be handled, and anything else worth knowing in this area. (2) We also noticed there isn't mention of Authorization in the wiki documentation. From looking at the code, it looks like you are handling Authorization by letting the dspace-api handle it (which is perfectly fine, in my opinion). You then catch any AuthorizationExceptions thrown and return a 401 or 403 response, depending on the situation. (Please correct me if I'm wrong about anything I've stated.) It just might be good to also document that more clearly, so that everyone is aware how Authorization is being handled and what happens when you are not authorized to make a change or access a particular resource. (3) Finally, we were all just curious how "ready" both you and Aaron feel this code is. Do you both feel the REST API will be ready for at least a "beta" level release after GSoC (i.e. do you feel it should be considered for public release in DSpace 1.7)? Or are there more outstanding issues/concerns that you each feel need resolution (and if so, what are they)? The developers are interested in hearing your thoughts on the work, and whether there are outstanding issues/concerns you may have in making this work more broadly available. (Bojan, any concerns/issues you mention will not hurt your GSoC final grade. We are just looking to better understand to current status of the code, and whether there is still more that needs working on before it is "ready for release") Thanks! Please let us know if you have any questions for us as well. - Tim -- Tim Donohue Technical Lead for DSpace Project DuraSpace.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Make an app they can't live without Enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge http://p.sf.net/sfu/RIM-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Dspace-devel mailing list Dspace-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-devel
