Links as atomic packages of optional attributes

[Drummond Reed <drummond.reed@cordance.net>]

I had another discussion with John Bradley about Breno’s proposal to move to “atomic” links (where both Rel and URI are zero-or-one cardinality). I agree with the point he was trying to make at the end of Thursday’s call about how helpful it would be to XRD crawlers to know what kind of metadata (if any) was at the other end of a link. But when he and I talked about it we both realized that the MediaType element could be used to convey that information.

 

Of course that’s yet another element that could be reduced to zero-or-one cardinality to keep Links as atomic packages. And of course if it’s zero-or-one cardinality, then it too should can an attribute.

 

So both John and I found ourselves liking the design of every Link consisting of three optional attributes: Rel, URI, and MediaType, as it would be very clear and easy to process, query, and crawl.

 

Do others agree?

 

If so, what happens to URITemplate? Is it a fourth optional attribute? Or are should we have two kinds of links: Link (with optional attributes Rel, URI, and MediaType) and LinkTemplate (with optional attributes Rel, URITemplate, and MediaType)?

 

=Drummond