xf:submission/@serialization="none" and GET request URLs

Hello,

I recently encountered a problem with an AtomPub server; when it was
sent a request of the form:

<http://localhost:8080/?>

the response should have been the AtomPub Service document. Instead it
returned an HTTP 400 status code because it didn't like the trailing ?
(question mark) character.

The ? got there because the Mozilla XForms plug-in put it on the end of
the GET request that was generated by an xf:submission:


<xf:submission id="retrieveService" mediatype="application/xml" 
    encoding="UTF-8" method="get" 
    replace="instance" instance="service">
  <xf:resource value="'http://localhost:8080/'"/>
  <xf:header>
    <xf:name>Accept</xf:name>
    <xf:value>application/atomsvc+xml</xf:value>
  </xf:header>
</xf:submission>

<xf:instance id="service"/>


as per section 11.9.1 of the XForms 1.1 recommendation.

However, with nothing to serialize I was wondering whether the trailing
'?' was actually necessary.

I then had a look at the serialization attribute of xf:submission and it
occurred to me that an additional condition could be added to the URI
construction rules which stated that if serialization="none" then the ?
(question mark) was not to be appended to the URL as there was nothing
to serialize. This would clarify the construction of request URLs and
hopefully prevent the problem I described.



Regards

Philip Fennell
>XML Developer (The Forge)
>
>BBC Future Media & Technology
>Media Village, 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TP 
>BC4 C4, Broadcast Centre
>
>T:	0208 0085318
>

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Received on Wednesday, 10 December 2008 14:32:41 UTC