Re: [xdi] Added sections on variables and template variables to the JSON Model page

[Markus Sabadello <markus.sabadello@xdi.org>]

Regarding variables, I like the idea of being able to "constrain" them.

I have found that this is useful when implementing XDI connectors, to "break" an XDI address into its individual parts.

It would be ideal if we could constrain variables in the following "three dimensions":

• only match a certain context function
• only match a certain context symbol, or a subset of the possible context symbols
• match either a single context or multiple contexts

In addition, it should be possible to:

• give a variable a number, so it can be referred to by multiple statements.
• give a variable a well-known name defined by XDI specifications, e.g. "from" to refer to the sender of an XDI message.

I added some thoughts on how this could be done the discussion page:

https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/JsonModel/Discussion

Markus

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 8:53 AM, Drummond Reed <drummond@connect.me> wrote:

I realized when I created the https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/JsonModel proposal, I forgot to include anything about variable syntax. Due to the JSON model only needing to use ( ), [ ], and < > brackets, it conveniently leaves { } for variables. See:

  https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/JsonModel#VariableSyntax

I also included section on template variables, which are only for documentation, but still important to standardize to make developer's lives easy. The proposal is to use <--variable-->. See:

  https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/JsonModel#TemplateVariableSyntax.28Informative.29

Again, please look this over, play with it, and send any questions about the JSON Model or syntax to the list -- or be prepared to bring them to Friday's telecon, since we really want to move from there into implementation (we have a lot of wiki pages and other docs, not to mention CODE, to begin updating).

Thanks,

=Drummond