Stuart,
ext Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol) wrote:
...
Anyway - that zip files don't intrinically maintain such info is not
a show stopper - though I would have thought that carrying media-type
information is a natural requirement for a packaging format for the
web.
Is it not the case that a zip file containing widgets is a
representation of an HTTP resource in its own right? If so, couldn't the
HTTP header returned in response to a request for that resource contain
an HTTP Link header [1] providing a link to another HTTP resource which
provides the package metadata, including links to the individual
resources contained within the zip file?
In principle that's a possibility - though it provides an opportunity for more
failure modes
(got the package, failed to get it's metadata) - and there will be the
inevitable
multiple round-trip concerns, though since the headers before the body metadata
retrieval
could be concurrent.
Indeed. Of course the metadata could still also be present inside the
zip file in addition to being linked via the HTTP Link header.
Cheers,
- johnk
