[Catalyst] Multi-language and REST

[Ashley]

On Apr 25, 2008, at 8:55 AM, Ian Docherty wrote:
> Dave Rolsky wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 Apr 2008, Ian Docherty wrote:
>>
>>>> http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/HTRQ_Headers.html#z12
>>>>
>>> Yes, I have done this previously, it is elegant, but not RESTful  
>>> and does not make it easy for users to change their settings on a  
>>> site-by-site basis dynamically, as you could if you provided a  
>>> language selection box on each page.
>>
>> Why do you say it's not RESTful?
>>
>> I think it's very RESTful, but it depends on how you think about  
>> it. If the language of the content is basically an issue of  
>> "formatting", then switching language based on a header is  
>> perfect. The client provides sufficient information to produce a  
>> correct response _on each request_ as part of HTTP. This is  
>> basically the essence of REST.
>>
>> OTOH, if you consider each language's content fundamentally  
>> separate things, then each language should have its own set of URIs.
> Yes, this is exactly what I had in mind. I did not (and still  
> don't) consider the language of the content as 'formatting', the  
> content for each language is different (in my mind).

I agree that it's content, not formatting. If CSS/client-side-JS can  
(in a practical fashion) change it, it's formatting, otherwise, it's  
content.

While a headers based solution sounds neat, it would cause several  
problems. A multi-lingual user, like our friendly neighborhood  
Aristotle who surely knows everything I'm saying already, might well  
like to have his default/first accept in Swahili but read a certain  
resource in Japanese, for whatever reason. Changing browser settings  
to see a different resource would be awful UI. Also, the big search  
bots would probably only end up indexing one version of your site.

The base/path swap sounds like a great approach.