Re: Handling unknown elements in an entry

[Ezra Cooper <ezra@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@xxxxxxx>
> Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 11:37:44 -0800
> To: Joe Gregorio <joe.gregorio@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Atom Protocol <atom-protocol@xxxxxxx>, Robert Sayre <mint@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Handling unknown elements in an entry
> 
> 
> On Mar 25, 2005, at 11:26 AM, Joe Gregorio wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 14:21:38 -0500, Robert Sayre
>> <mint@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> If the client was intentionally trying to delete the extension, that's
>>> exactly what it would do, isn't it?
>> 
>> Or should it return the entry with the element empty? I think
>> that would more clearly show the intention.
> 
> Uh, Rob, isn't that a red herring?  If you explicitly want to delete
> anything, you're within your rights.  I think the point is that clients
> should silently discard extension data... or am I missing something?

If you meant "shouldn't" then I agreed totally!

But Rob raises the question: how to express the deletion of an element. I'm
not sure. Is there ever a difference between "element X is not in the entry"
and "element X has an empty value"? This must have been dealt with a hundred
times in other XML protocols. What's the standard practice?

Ezra