Re: HTTP, WebDAV, and POST

[Lisa Dusseault <lisa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jun 6, 2004, at 1:09 PM, John Panzer wrote:
> Ken MacLeod wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > * Although WebDAV does not use POST, there does not seem to be any
> >   conflict in Atom specifying POST for creating server-located
> >   resources and at some point using WebDAV actions on the resources
> >   after they've been created.
> +1.  I think of these as two separate things that happen to go well 
> together, like chocolate and peanut butter:
>
> (a) Simple creation of resources through binary POST in which the 
> server has complete control of the final URI (option #6);
> (b) WebDAV -- or something upwardly compatible with WebDAV -- which 
> allows for client-controlled URIs, moving, deleting, locking, etc.

Microsoft's Exchange 2000 WebDAV engine combines these two in pretty 
much the way you describe.  When the user is creating a new item in a 
WebDAV-compliant collection and doesn't care what the URL is, as long 
as it's unique, it uses POST with a request-URI of the target parent 
collection. The server generates a unique URI inside the WebDAV 
collection.  If the client wishes to choose the URL for a new resource, 
or if the client wishes to overwrite an existing resource, the client 
uses PUT instead.

This POST usage isn't canonicalized as part of the standard 
capabilities of a standard WebDAV collection, but it's a simple 
extension and one could easily imagine standardizing it.

Lisa