Re: Link relation for adding a resource

Erik Wilde <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.services.rest
Message-ID <[email protected]>
hello jan.

On 2012-09-01 05:44 , Jan Algermissen wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2012, at 6:07 PM, Paul Cohen wrote:
>> I would like to define, in JSON, a link that provides a way to add a
>> new resource to a collection of resources.
> HTTP POST has that semantic already, there is no need to use a link relation for that.

why do you think POST has create semantics? POST does not have any 
semantics other than doing something non-safe non-idempotent. while 
create fits that pattern, it's much more specific and not something that 
is in any way defined by HTTP itself.

> All you need to know is that some resource has collection semantics, so you should tell the client that /photos is a collection rather than focussing on the action.

you're assuming that by exposing collection semantics this inherently 
means you can POST to create. again, that's not something that HTTP 
tells you. for example, AtomPub says that in order to create, you have 
to POST to an "edit" link, and not just to the collection itself. you 
could define a media type where the rule would be that you can always 
POST to a collection's URI to create a new resource, but that would be 
semantics defined by that media type, and not by HTTP itself.

cheers,

dret.

-- 
erik wilde | mailto:[email protected]  -  tel:+1-510-2061079 |
            | UC Berkeley  -  School of Information (ISchool) |
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