[Pulp-dev] [pulp 3] proposed change to publishing REST api

[Michael Hrivnak]

Unless the publication can be created before the response is returned, the
response code will need to still be 202.

As for the path, either way seems workable, although I have two hesitations
about POSTing to publications/.

1) Normally in REST when a user creates a resource via POST to a collection
endpoint, they are expected to provide a representation of the new
resource, even if it is only partial. In the case of initiating a publish
task, we do not want the user to provide any part of the new publication's
state. We only want the user to optionally provide a bit of information
about *how* to create a new publication. Should the publication be
incremental or not? Which repo version should be published? etc. The
difference may seem subtle, but I think it's important.

2) The act of creating a publication may also change state of other
resources, and not only subordinate resources such as a publication
artifact. For example, if there is a Distribution with auto_update set to
True, its state will be changed by a publish task. That could be seen as an
unexpected side effect when merely POSTing to a publications/ endpoint.
When an operation affects state across multiple resources and resource
types, that's usually a good time to use a "controller" type endpoint that
is specific to the operation.

Our asynchronous tasks will often need to create one or more resources. A
publish task creates a publication. An upload-related task may create one
or more content units. A sync/associate/unassociate task will create a new
repository version. New resources are the output of those tasks. However
each of those tasks will sometimes not create any resources, such as when
an equivalent resource already exists. Creating resources is a common
characteristic of tasks, so it would make sense to report that in a
standard part of the task status.

A task status should not include an exhaustive list of every resource
created. For example, a publish task should not include a reference to
every metadata artifact it made. It would be sufficient to include a
reference to the publication, the task's primary output, which then can be
used to reference subordinate resources.

On a task status representation, this could be included in a field called
"created_resources", "output", "return_value", or similar.

Thoughts on that idea?

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 11:27 AM, Mihai Ibanescu <mihai.ibanescu at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That seems sensible, and in line with REST's mantra of "nouns in resource
> URLs, not verbs".
>
> On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 3:27 PM, Dennis Kliban <dkliban at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>> @jortel and I have been discussing[0] how a user should find out what
>> publication was created after a request is made to
>> http://localhost:8000/api/v3/repositories/foo/publishers/exa
>> mple/bar/publish/
>>
>> I propose that we get rid of the above URL from our REST API and add
>> ability to POST to http://localhost:8000/api/v3/r
>> epositories/foo/publishers/example/bar/publications/ instead. The
>> response would be a 201. Each publication would have a task associated with
>> it.
>>
>> This work would probably be done by whoever picks up issue 3033[1].
>>
>> [0] https://pulp.plan.io/issues/3035
>> [1] https://pulp.plan.io/issues/3033
>>
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>
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-- 

Michael Hrivnak

Principal Software Engineer, RHCE

Red Hat
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