mca blog

I posted some example code along w/ a short explanation today. It demonstrates an HTTP resource update pattern based on an idea by Roy Fielding. At the end of a post on the topic of WebDAV semantics, Fielding illustrates one way to expose and manipulate a set of properties for a resource using a URI convention (similar to that used for HTML image maps) where appending ;props to a resource URI allows clients to access any available properties for that resource. Since I first saw this idea articulated by Fielding, I've dubbed the pattern Fielding Property Maps (without his knowledge or consent).

the interactive example can be used to modify the metadata for the poem document using the Fielding Property Maps pattern and supports the following operations from any HTTP-aware client:

GET     /poem;props           retrieves a list of properties for that document
GET     /poem;props?{dcterm}  retrieves a single property for that document
PUT     /poem;props?{dcterm}  supports updating the value the indicated property
DELETE  /poem;props?{dcterm}  deletes the value for the indicated {dcterm}, 
                              but does not remove the actual metadata entry.

thanks to Jan Algermissen for showing me Roy Fielding's email post on the subject.