Network Working GroupJ. Reschke
Internet-Draftgreenbytes
Intended status: InformationalOctober 2005
Expires: April 2006

The HTTP ADDMEMBER Method

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Copyright Notice

Copyright © The Internet Society (2005). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

Frequently, servers may want to allow resource creation through HTTP, but are not able to support HTTP's PUT method for creating new resources, as resource names are completely controlled by the server. This document proposes a new HTTP method called "ADDMEMBER" with semantics similar to those of PUT, except for the fact that the server chooses the URI for the newly created resource.

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1. Introduction

Frequently, servers may want to allow resource creation through HTTP, but are not able to support HTTP's PUT method for creating new resources, as resource names are completely controlled by the server (see [RFC2616], Section 9.6). This document proposes a new HTTP method called "ADDMEMBER" with semantics similar to those of PUT, except for the fact that the server chooses the URI for the newly created resource.

Some alternative approaches are summarized in Appendix A for discussion.

2. Notational Conventions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

All terminology not defined explicitly in this document is inherited from [RFC2616].

3. ADDMEMBER method

The ADDMEMBER method requests that the enclosed entity be stored as a new resource under a URI selected by the server based on the Request-URI referring to a container resource. [rfc.comment.1: Do we need to require a specific containment model here, such as WebDAV's collections? --reschke]

If a new resource is created, the origin server MUST inform the user agent via the 201 (Created) response, including a "Location" response header containing the URI of the newly created resource. If the resource could not be created, an appropriate error response SHOULD be given that reflects the nature of the problem. The recipient of the entity MUST NOT ignore any Content-* (e.g. Content-Range) headers that it does not understand or implement and MUST return a 501 (Not Implemented) response in such cases.

Responses to this method are not cacheable.

The fundamental difference between the ADDMEMBER and PUT requests is reflected in the different meaning of the Request-URI. The URI in an ADDMEMBER request identifies the resource that will handle the enclosed entity by storing it as a new resource with a server-selected URI. In contrast, the URI in a PUT request identifies the entity enclosed with the request -- the user agent knows what URI is intended and the server MUST NOT attempt to apply the request to some other resource.

ADDMEMBER requests MUST obey the message transmission requirements set out in Section 8.2 of [RFC2616].

Entity-headers in the ADDMEMBER request SHOULD be handled the same way as defined for PUT.

This method is neither safe nor idempotent (see [RFC2616], Section 9).

3.1. Example: ADDMEMBER

>> Request:

ADDMEMBER /CollY HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Content-Type: application/xml

<foobar/>

>> Response:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: http://www.example.com/CollY/3253623

4. Feature Discovery

Clients can detect server support for the ADDMEMBER method by inspecting the "Allow" response header returned for an OPTIONS request on the Request-URI. Note that a server may support ADDMEMBER only on a subset of the URIs it is handling.

5. Security Considerations

The same security considerations as those for HTTP PUT apply.

6. Acknowledgements

[rfc.comment.2: TBD. --reschke]

7. References

7.2. Informative References

[RFC2774]
Nielsen, H., Leach, P., and S. Lawrence, “An HTTP Extension Framework”, RFC 2774, February 2000.

Appendix A. Dicussion of alternative approaches

This section tries to summarize alternative approaches.

A.1. POST

POST is a very generic method and therefore can be used to achieve the same result. However, clients that rely on the very specific processing defined for ADDMEMBER would need a reliable way to discover how the server is processing POST requests, requiring a new discovery mechanism.

A.2. Implicit PUT extensions

Several communities are discussing to simply use PUT in these situations. The server would allocate a new URI and send a "Location" response header with the new URI, rather than storing the entity at the Request-URI. This seems to be contrary to the stated HTTP semantics for PUT, but would allow existing clients to make use of this functionality (although it's not clear how well they would handle the "URI change upon creation" scenario.

Example:

>> Request:

PUT /CollY/something HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
If-None-Match: *
Content-Type: application/xml

<foobar/>

>> Response:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: http://www.example.com/CollY/3253623

A.3. Explicit extensions based on RFC2774

The extension mechanism defined in [RFC2774] could be used to extend either POST or PUT with the desired semantics.

Example:

>> Request:

M-POST /CollY HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Man: "urn:ietf:id:draft-reschke-http-addmember-00"; ns=00
00-store-enclosed-entity: 
Content-Type: application/xml

<foobar/>

>> Response:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: http://www.example.com/CollY/3253623

Author's Address

Julian F. Reschke
greenbytes GmbH
Hafenweg 16
Muenster, NW 48155
Germany
Phone: +49 251 2807760
Fax: +49 251 2807761
EMail: julian.reschke@greenbytes.de
URI: http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/

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