[wsrp-markup] [wsrp][markup] Aug 7 Conf Call Minutes

[Chris Braun <cbraun@silverstream.com>]

Minutes from August 7 WSRP Markup Call

 

1. URL Rewriting

    a.  Consumer URL Rewriting

        - Complexity differences between Resource and Action URLs

 

[discussion]

It was discussed that requiring a consumer to rewrite (Namespacing and URLs) proxied resources would put a large burden on the consumer.  For the first rev of the spec we will require that the consumer rewrite portlet entity markup only.  It will be the producers responsibility to handle static resources.  One solution is to allow for the getmarkup call to return resources other than markup.  Consumer URL rewriting can then occur on the content provided by getMarkup.  We should also add a property to the getMarkup response to indicate weather or not Consumer URL rewriting should be done on the returned resource.

 

        - Marker Syntax

    b.  URL Encoding/Decoding (http://www.w3.org/TR/html40/appendix/notes.html#non-ascii-chars)

 

[discussion]

For all WSRP URLs we will require that the URLs be encoded in UTF-8 and then escaped.  We will provide a reference to the above URL in the spec.

 

2.  Markup Encoding

    a.  Consumer provides list of accepted encoding charsets.  Rather than requiring UTF-8, this would be more flexible.  Where a consumer may choose to accept UTF-8 as well as a client specific encoding. 

 

[discussion]

The Consumer will provide a preferred a preferred charset on the request to the producer entity.  The producer will then have to encode the markup with that charset.  The Consumer may also perform charset conversion.  If the consumer provides this feature a property will be set in the registration parameters set to true.  False will be the default.  If the Consumer provides charset conversion then a portlet is free to generate markup in any standard charset encoding.  This will need to be added to the Meta-Data area of the spec as well as the markup section.

 

3. Resource URLs

 

[discussion]

Three types of Resource URLs:

1.  Direct URL

    A simple URL to any resource on the web, neither proxied or served by the portlet entity.

2.  Portlet Entity URL (link to portlet which serves a resource via getMarkup)

    A URL pointing back to the portlet entity which tells the consumer to execute getMarkup to retrieve a specific resource

3.  Proxied URL

    A URL to a resource somewhere on the web (perhaps on the portlet entities host) which must be proxied by the consumer so that clients retrieve all resources for a particular portlet entity from the consumer. 

 

There was some discussion that Proxied URLs are not required if we allow portlets to serve resources themselves.  The idea is that the producer container can handle the resources.  This would further simplify the consumer container.

 

TODO:  We should identify if there are use cases where a proxied URL would be required.  Do we need both portlet URLs and proxied URLs? 

 

4. Attachments

    a. Sending in response (use case)

 

[discussion]

Portlet entities should be able to provide markup and other resources via the getMarkup call.

 

    b. Posting in request (use case)

 

[discussion]

A portlet entity should be able to post large binary content back to itself from the consumer.  An example of this is posting multi-part form encoded content.

 

    c. SOAP vs. DIME

 

[discussion]

Soap attachments are bound to SOAP where as WSRP should not be bound to a specific protocol.  DIME is supported by .NET while SOAP is supported by JAX-RPC.  It seems likely that JAX-RPC will support both, down the road. 

 

TODO: Carsten will investigate the status of these specifications and relay the information to the group.

 

Postponed topics

 

- Window States

    a.  Can portlet entities render action links which change window state?