Janne Jalkanen wrote:
I have a strong requirement for a REST-ful scheme, with some
flexibility on the definition of REST-ful. One thing I didn't
Remember that we can't break existing URL schemes. So essentially we
are talking about replacing the current URLConstructor scheme with
another URLConstructor scheme, which may or may not rely on Stripes
artifacts.
Yes, understood. I'm thinking it might be a fourth URLConstructor scheme
since it won't completely replace (plug-and-play wise) any of the
existing schemes. And as I mentioned to Andrew, I'd like to be able to
literally re-use it to invoke another web service layer on top of
JSPWiki (for preservation, interwiki, and other potential services).
IMO RESTful has become an overloaded hypeword these days. You can look
at it this way: we already *are* RESTful. *All* applications which use
the browser are RESTful. REST does not mean "we will not use query
string". REST means that every resource is accessible through an unique
link (and that it's stateless, which we mostly are anyway).
I'm not much on hype myself, and while I do agree that the ShortURLConstructor
is either very close to or exactly matching the URL schema I'm considering,
there are some problems with the existing implementation *and* I believe
I may have a requirement to load the verb on as the latter token rather
than being included in the query string. I don't want to quibble over the
definition of RESTful either, but I may need to replace that latter URL
ShortURLConstructor - uses path-like reference style:
http://mywiki.com/jspwiki/wiki/Main
http://mywiki.com/jspwiki/wiki/Main?do=Edit
with
http://mywiki.com/jspwiki/wiki/Main/edit/
(both lowercased and potentially a different choice than "edit" (it won't
be up to me though I'll have some influence).
When it comes to the machine-accessible APIs, then REST becomes a far
more useful paradigm (as opposed to things like XML-RPC and SOAP).
There is no single endpoint, but you use the same kind of an API to
access your data as with the regular browser.
Yes, certainly. We're dealing with government/corporate cooperative team
designing and implementing an enormous application that is entirely built
on this principle. There are RESTful URLs all through the application and
I've got a requirement to hook JSPWiki into that. It would be lovely if
the URLs that the user sees when using the wiki are the *same* ones (or
are from at least the same schema) as the ones hooking the wiki into the
preservation system, which is why I'm excited by Andrew's latest missive.
Murray
...........................................................................
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