RE: ISSUE-57: The use of HTTP Redirection

Hi Stuart,

Ok, that's a good point. What it actually says is 

"The response to the request can be found under a different URI and SHOULD
be retrieved using a GET method on that resource."

My interpretation is that when you get a 303 you don't get a response to
the request you made. Otherwise, there would be no point in redirecting. I
perhaps stated this a little strongly, but I believe that what I wrote is
in the spirit of the intent of 303.

Best wishes
Rhys

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stuart Williams [mailto:skw@hp.com] 
> Sent: 03 September 2007 10:19
> To: Rhys Lewis
> Cc: 'Ed Davies'; 'Technical Architecture Group WG'
> Subject: Re: ISSUE-57: The use of HTTP Redirection
> 
> Rhys Lewis wrote:
> 
> [Offlist]
> 
> <snip/>
> > Let me try and tease this apart to see if I understand why 
> you think 
> > this is a problem.
> >
> > In Tim's example, the CERN 303 redirect simply says there is no 
> > representation for the early day WWW URI. That URI identifies a 
> > non-information resource.
> I don't think that's a claim you can make (ie. that it *IS* a 
> non-information resource).
> > There is no representation available. The nature of the URI 
> that CERN 
> > gives back in the 303 is completely indeterminate. It could be an 
> > information resource, or a non-information resource, or 
> could lead to 
> > another redirect, for example. (And of course it could lead to a 
> > plethora of other response codes indicating various form of 
> error that 
> > I'll ignore here).
> >
> > Assuming the URIs are set up correctly, and the URI 
> provided by CERN 
> > in the 303 does indeed identify an information resource, a 
> > representation can be retrieved and everything has worked 
> out as intended.
> >
> > Surely the criterion for minting URIs is straightforward. 
> If the URI 
> > is for an information resource (provides representations) 
> you return a 
> > suitable representation, if you have one, and a 200 response coed 
> > (let's ignore content negotiation for the purposes of this 
> > discussion). If, however, the URI is for a non-information 
> resource, you have two options.
> > You can return a 303 and a helpful URI. You're not allowed 
> to return a 
> > representation according to HTTP.
> Really? Does the HTTP spec actually say that?
> 
> <snip/>
> > Best wishes
> > Rhys
> >
> >   
> Stuart
> 
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Received on Wednesday, 12 September 2007 07:26:12 UTC