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Re: RESTful operations on document fragments

• From: "Anne Thomas Manes" <atmanes@g...>
• To: "Len Bullard" <len.bullard@u...>
• Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:34:56 -0500

You could always add an abstraction layer that maps URLs (resources)
to document fragments. In your Bible example, you could define a
resource for each verse in the document. Therefore you can PUT an
updated verse, and a bit of code would then update the appropriate
document fragment.

I believe that fragments (#xxxx) are different from queries (?xxxx). A
URL containing a query string is still a URL. A fragment is not part
of the URL (see
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970708/htmlweb.html#h-4.1.1).

Anne

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 5:51 PM, Len Bullard <len.bullard@u...> wrote:
> This was the same challenge in HyTime which is why resolvers were separated
>  from the link itself (I've forgotten the formal terminology.).  Hytime went
>  off the rails because of a) excessive abstraction and b) extending it to
>  mean all formats therefore the need for resolvers in any kind of data format
>  or system for that matter.
>
>  It's tough to get around NOTATIONs realistically even if you wedge new
>  syntax and naming into it.  Somewhere, the link has to point to the address
>  (no names and locations aren't the same thing), and the address has to be
>  passed to a resolver that can return something from the data format it is in
>  to a consumer that can read what is returned.
>
>  I know you know all of this.   I just don't know quite how one extends the
>  addressing possible without opening that can of worms.
>
>  len
>
>
>  From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...]
>
>
>  However, document fragments are typically identified through the
>  fragment identifier, the #xxxx that is the usual domain of tools like
>  XPointer.  The fragment identifier is not normally sent to the server,
>  and is supposed to be processed on the client side, depending on the
>  MIME type of the response. [3]
>
>  That makes good sense in the GET context which has been typical of most
>  Web operations.  However, it raises a challenge in the RESTful
>  processing context.
>
>  Am I required to perform RESTful operations only against a complete
>  resource?
>
>  <snip />
>
>
>  The problem of resource granularity seems like a question that is
>  starting to need a more general and at least somewhat flexible solution.
>
>  (Rails' current RESTfulness can dodge this because each database record
>  is treated as a resource, and that's the usual granularity developers
>  work at.  It only gets weird when you look beyond regular tables to
>  irregular documents.)
>
>  Thanks,
>  Simon St.Laurent
>  Retiring XML troublemaker
>  http://simonstl.com/
>
>  [1] -
>  <http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/01/rails_rest_and_anarchist_xml_1.h
>  tml>
>
>  [2] - <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html>
>
>  [3] - <http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Fragment.html>
>
>  [4] - <http://bitworking.org/news/296/How-To-Do-RESTful-Partial-Updates>
>
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• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: RESTful operations on document fragments
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: RESTful operations on document fragments
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• References:
  • RE: RESTful operations on document fragments
    • From: Len Bullard <len.bullard@u...>