Jan Algermissen wrote:
The general question is: Does a collection that declares acceptance of a media type implicitly declare conformance to any processingmodel/contract the media type defines (if so)? Is<accept> suitable for allowing the client to reasonably expect conforming behavior of the collection?
No. I have AtomPub implementations that have <accept>*/*</accept> and they don't do any per-media-type special processing at all.
<accept> has a very vague meaning. If you have to choose between two collections, one of which claims to accept the type of document you want to POST, and the other doesn't, but you otherwise have no reason to prefer one over the other, then you should prefer to POST to the collection that claims to accept the media type you have. The <accept> element doesn't give you any more information than that. A POST to any collection may succeed or fail for any reason, regardless of what its <accept> elements say.
- Brian