Adding POST capability to atom:link
Hello, I am trying to use opensearch to do some paging of my search results and I have a question regard adding POST capabilities to the atom:link construct. The information I want to pass back to the server is complex in nature and makes sense to capture in XML. My question is whether or not there are any thoughts or plans to extend the atom:link contruct to support something like this: link rel=next href=http://example.com/; type=application/atom+xml action=POST parameter name=q xxx:Payload/ /parameter parameter name=blah value=blah/ /link Thanks. Sri Gopalan Booz Allen Hamilton Office: Allen 147 Tel: 703.377.1404 Mobile: 703.395.4057
Re: Adding POST capability to atom:link
2006/10/26, Gopalan Sri: link rel=next href=http://example.com/; type=application/atom+xml action=POST parameter name=q xxx:Payload/ /parameter parameter name=blah value=blah/ /link I hope such a thing won't ever exist !!! -- Thomas Broyer
Re: Adding POST capability to atom:link
+1. This would not, IMHO, be a good thing for Atom. Feel free to define an extension if you think it would be good. Implementations that find it useful could choose to support it but I doubt you'll find many. - James Thomas Broyer wrote: 2006/10/26, Gopalan Sri: link rel=next href=http://example.com/; type=application/atom+xml action=POST parameter name=q xxx:Payload/ /parameter parameter name=blah value=blah/ /link I hope such a thing won't ever exist !!!
Re: Adding POST capability to atom:link
Gopalan, On 26.10.2006, at 18:24, Gopalan Sri wrote: Hello, I am trying to use opensearch to do some paging of my search results and I have a question regard adding POST capabilities to the atom:link construct. atom link is not the appropriate place to do something like this. The issue of the server telling the client what resources implement POST is addressed by the Atom Publishing Protocol[1] in the form of collections. If you need to communicate more details, you'd have to use an extension such as atompub-features[2] (its intention though is to enable services to declare behavioural aspects of a collection and not to declare an input form but atompub-feature's controls can be used much like a forms language). HTH, Jan [1] http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub- protocol-11.txt [2] http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-snell-atompub- feature-01.txt
Re: Adding POST capability to atom:link
On 26.10.2006, at 18:24, Gopalan Sri wrote: Hello, I am trying to use opensearch to do some paging of my search results and I have a question regard adding POST capabilities to the atom:link construct. Gopalan, could you reveal the use case that makes you think you need the POST capabilities? Jan The information I want to pass back to the server is complex in nature and makes sense to capture in XML. My question is whether or not there are any thoughts or plans to extend the atom:link contruct to support something like this: link rel=next href=http://example.com/; type=application/atom +xml action=POST parameter name=q xxx:Payload/ /parameter parameter name=blah value=blah/ /link Thanks. Sri Gopalan Booz Allen Hamilton Office: Allen 147 Tel: 703.377.1404 Mobile: 703.395.4057
Re: Adding POST capability to atom:link
On 26.10.2006, at 18:24, Gopalan Sri wrote:to support something like this: link rel="next" href=""http://example.com">http://example.com/" type="application/atom+xml" action="" parameter name="q" xxx:Payload/ /parameter parameter name="blah" value="blah"/ /link If I understand this correctly, you intent to parameterize the request to go to the next page; since your parametersseem to be too complex to but them into the query string, you thought about using POST - yes?If so, this is bad practice anyhow, since you loose all the benefits of GET.Jan
Re: Adding POST capability to atom:link
Gopalan,On 26.10.2006, at 21:31, Gopalan Sri wrote: Thank you all for your quick response. I apologize for the weak description of my problem.Jan, you are correct in your assessment that I wish to parameterize my request to go to the next page because my parameters are too complex to represent in a query string.If you aim to provide a REST interface, do not mimick a query interface (at least not a complex one). Think of your 'asset space' in terms of pre-defined, useful collections that you expose as resources (feeds) and provide light weight query interfaces to them that fit with GET requests.Think in terms of browsing and drilling-down; REST interfaces guide the client into the content instead of assuming the knowledge to constructa query does reside in the client.This, BTW, avoids coupling your clients to the local data model specifics.Jan"The Web doesn’t do generic query"http://www.markbaker.ca/blog/2006/08/09/sparql-useful-but-not-a-game-changer/ Currently, we are representing our parameter in XML. The reasoning behind this is that we are trying to support an enterprise search operation using a SOAP and REST interfaces. Since we have to encode the request in XML for the SOAP interface, we were hoping to reuse that XML object within our REST based interfaces as well. We are using Atom to capture the results of enterprise search. The problem I encounter arises when we start thinking about the paging of results. For RESTful access to our services, we are trying to use open source/commercial Atom readers that support Open Search. The recommendations laid out by the OpenSearch 1.1 specification (http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#Example_of_OpenSearch_response_elements_in_Atom_1.0) suggest implementing paging with atom:link/ elements using specific values for @rel (e.g. self, first, previous, next, last). Right now I am trying to figure out how I can still follow their guidance while managing the fact that my parameter cannot easily be encoded as a regular query string.Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.Sri From: Jan Algermissen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 3:05 PMTo: Gopalan SriCc: atom-syntax@imc.orgSubject: Re: Adding POST capability to atom:link On 26.10.2006, at 18:24, Gopalan Sri wrote: to supportsomething like this:link rel="next" href=""http://example.com">http://example.com/" type="application/atom+xml"action="" parameter name="q" xxx:Payload/ /parameter parameter name="blah" value="blah"//link If I understand this correctly, you intent to parameterize the request to go to the next page; since your parameters seem to be too complex to but them into the query string, you thought about using POST - yes? If so, this is bad practice anyhow, since you loose all the benefits of GET. Jan
