Re: Searching for concensus on Pub Control (Re: Consensus call: PacePubControl)

[James M Snell <jasnell@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ezra Cooper wrote:

> On Jul 21, 2005, at 1:05 PM, Joe Gregorio wrote:
>
> > Do  you think the concept of 'draft' applies to members of
> > Generic Collections or just members of Entry Collections?
>
>
> I've been working on the assumption that we don't treat metadata about 
> members of generic collections--or rather, whatever metadata is in the 
> resource is opaque to Atom per se.
>
> I think this is a reasonable approach, since Atom is all about 
> entries; "generic" resources are just cargo, as far as Atom is concerned.
>
> Ezra
My brain is beginning to align with this view as well. 

A Collection is a collection of entries.
An entry may reference (e.g. <content src="..." /> ) some non-Atom type 
of content data.
The Atom protocol works against the entries within the collection

This essentially eliminates Generic Collections and greatly simplifies APP.

If I want to have a photoblog, I would not use APP to post the images 
themselves, I would use APP to post the entries describing the images.  
If I want to post the entry to the collection and upload the photo at 
the same time, I either include the binary content of the photo as 
base64 encoded content within the entry, or use a multipart message with 
a <content src="..." /> in the entry.

Example 1: Post an entry to a photoblog using an external link to photo
 process: upload photo with FTP, post entry to the collection

 POST /collection-uri HTTP/1.1
 Host: example.com
 Content-Type: application/atom+xml
 Content-Length: nnnn

 <entry xmlns="...">
   ...
   <content type="image/png" 
src="http://www.example.com/images/myphoto.png"; />
 </entry>

Example 2: Post an entry to a photoblog using inline binary content
 process: base64 encode photo, post entry to the collection

 POST /collection-uri HTTP/1.1
 Host: example.com
 Content-Type: application/atom+xml
 Content-Length: nnnn

 <entry xmlns="...">
   ...
   <content type="image/png">{base64 content}</content>
 </entry>


Example 3: Post an entry to a photoblog using multipart content
 process: binary image packaged as second part of a multipart/mixed 
content. entry is the first part

 POST /collection-uri HTTP/1.1
 Host: example.com
 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=abc123
 Content-Length: nnnn

 --abc123
 Content-Type: application/atom+xml
 <entry xmlns="...">
   ...
   <content type="image/png" src="cid:..."; />
 </entry>

 --abc123
 Content-ID: ...
 Content-Type: image/png

 {binary content}


When a multipart/mixed is sent, the server would respond with distinct 
URL's for the entry and the binary content.

- James