[rest-practices] Atom as a generic container? [was Re: Media types]

Bill Burke bburke at redhat.com
Fri Apr 16 19:53:19 UTC 2010



Bryan Kearney wrote:
>> Eoghan suggested something similar here:
>>
>>    https://fedorahosted.org/pipermail/rhevm-api/2010-April/000025.html
>>
>>> application/atom+xml
>>
>> This would just be e.g.:
>>
>>    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
>>    <atom:feed xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
>>      <atom:title>VMs feed</atom:title>
>>      <atom:updated>2010-04-16T09:47:55.288+01:00</atom:updated>
>>      <atom:id>http://{host}/vms</atom:id>
>>      <atom:author>
>>        <atom:name>RHEV-M</atom:name>
>>      </atom:author>
>>      <atom:entry>
>>        <atom:title>vm2</atom:title>
>>        <atom:content>
>>          <vm>
>>            <link rel="self" href="http://{host}/vms/3"/>
>>            <id>3</id>
>>            <name>vm3</name>
>>            <actions>
>>              ...
>>            </actions>
>>          </vm>
>>        </atom:content>
>>
>> That's simple enough:
>>
>>    
>> http://git.fedoraproject.org/git/?p=rhevm-api.git;a=commitdiff;h=3fff835a
>>
>> But now, what about supporting clients who prefer json or yaml? Does
>> "application/atom+json" make much sense, I wonder?
>>
>>> application/atomcat+xml
>>
>> We'd use this to describe e.g. 'vm' and 'host' categories?
> 
> So... one of he items I heard about why REST and not SOAP is that the 
> SOAP envelope is terrible. What I see here is starting to look like such 
> an envelope. Will you be supporting "natrual" xml and json as well?
> 

On one hand maybe somebody wants to listen for updates to VMS.

On the other hand, I don't see the point of using Atom for returning 
collections.  It was written as a format for feeds not a collection format.

-- 
Bill Burke
JBoss, a division of Red Hat
http://bill.burkecentral.com




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