Re: Approach to atompub implementation for a forum

["A. Pagaltzis" <pagaltzis@xxxxxx>]

* Ivan Sagalaev <maniac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [2007-12-12 00:35]:
> I'm playing with an idea of implementing AtomPub for my forum
> and I'm a bit stuck choosing a right architecture.

Think Usenet.

Newsgroups = collections. Messages = entries. Threading headers =
RFC 4685. All messages are created equal. Threads emerge from the
use of threading headers.

There’s no good way to make it work reliably for thread-oblivious
clients. The one-collection-per-thread approach seems to work,
but has no good way of starting new threads. You could specify a
protocol for creating collections, but that limits your audience
and makes thread creation a non-atomic process, forcing you to
think about race conditions, half-completed attempts etc. Or you
could use “magic” collections that accept entries which they
promote to threads in a particular forum; then generic clients
will be surprised by having to look for an entry in a collection
other than the one it was posted to, will still be able to post
*replies* to these magic collections, and as you noted, will be
faced with ever-growing service documents.

No, think Usenet.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>