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





On Dec 28, 2009, at 4:30 PM, Nikunj R. Mehta wrote:



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?


Rephrasing the question:

Whay is the sentence "Collections are represented as Atom Feeds" in RFC 5023?

Is it a MUST requirement for AtomPub servers?

(Or a SHOULD or a hint to client developers?)


Or, rephrasing again:

Could the sentence "Collections are represented as Atom Feeds" be removed from RFC 5023 without consequences?


Why is it in there at all?



Jan

P.S. I am using that sentence as a stripped down example of a point I am trying to make. No intention to discuss/question RFC 5023 in particular.





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






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Jan Algermissen

Mail: algermissen@xxxxxxx
Blog: http://algermissen.blogspot.com/
Home: http://www.jalgermissen.com
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