[Catalyst] Re: CatalystSites.org

[Toby Corkindale]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:20:40AM +0200, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
> * Toby Corkindale <tjc at wintrmute.net> [2008-04-16 09:10]:
> > Eg:
> > http://eventbot.dryft.net/people/view/13
> > ==
> > http://eventbot.dryft.net/people/view/pir
> > 
> > (It's an old site of mine written in an afternoon; if/when
> > I refactor it, those URLs would be more REST-like, ie.
> > http://eventbot.dryft.net/people/(pir|13)/view )
> 
> 1. Why is the `/view` bit necessary at all?

It's not! Whoops, yeah, that's another hangover from the "old style" way I
coded the site.

>    (Note: Chained is absolutely *grrrrrreat* for taking full
>    control of your URI space.)

I love it and have been using it in all my newer projects.

I had a difficult time explaining it to some colleagues though. I mean, they
were still struggling to understand how the other attributes worked, and then
Chained works so differently from Local that their minds exploded.

> 2. URI design is important, but not because it has anything to do
>    with REST.
>    
>    Your URIs could be /aslkdjsad42 and /xyzzysd-291kk1 for all
>    REST cares. REST is about decoupling server and client from
>    each other by keeping client state on the client and resource
>    state on the server and passing representations of resources
>    back and forth to affect the state on each end.
> 
>    In all this, URIs serve purely as identifiers that the client
>    is expected not to try to interpret in any way at all. Only
>    the server which has minted a URI is allowed to ascribe any
>    meaning to it.

Really? I thought good URI design was part of "best practices" for REST.
*Tries to find the REST book that was on his desk last week*

Not that REST is a standard, beyond the requirement to adhere to existing
standards :)

Toby