Re: MUST a collection be returned as an Atom feed?

["Nikunj R. Mehta" <nikunj.mehta@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 28, 2009, at 5:33 AM, Jan Algermissen wrote:

> I have raised the following issue on rest-discuss in various forms  
> already. Excuse me for bringing it up on this list again. I am just  
> curious what people here think.
>
> RFC 5023 says:
>  "Collection - A Resource that contains a set of Member Resources.  
> Collections are represented as Atom Feeds."[1]
> Does that mean that an AtomPub server MUST be (at least) respond to  
> a GET on a collection URI with an Atom feed
> representation?
>
> I am asking because I consider that to be too constraining. The  
> client should not be able to make such an assumption. It should  
> discover at runtime that the response is application/atom+xml rather  
> than expect it to be prior to the request.

In other words is there room for conneg when requesting a collection?  
Is that the intended purpose of your question?

Nikunj Mehta
http://blog.o-micron.com