Service Media Type Matching

Hi folks,

As it is currently defined in XRI-resolution-v2.0-wd10, the service media type in an XRD is an opaque value. This means that if the XRD publisher wishes to express that the service offer multiple related media types, such as image/png and image/jpg, it needs to have them individually listed as <MediaType> elements. That is fine, but there is currently no way for a user agent to specify more than a single service media type value for service selection. It would be nice if we could define a more intelligent path matching mechanism, to allow wildcards just like with regular MIME type handling. So,

Input SRVMTYPE = image/*

XRD MediaType = image/jpg

Result = match

Input SRVMTYPE = text/html

XRD MediaType = text/*

Result = match

Input SRVMTYPE = application/pdf

XRD MediaType = application/ms-word

Result = no match

When a wildcard is present in the input service media type, it means substitute anything here.

When a wildcard is present in the XRD MediaType, it means “I offer all types”.

This could also be extended to */* which should still work.

What do folks think?

=wil (http://xri.net/=wil)

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