Computing the CHECKIN URI in WebDAV versioning

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Copyright © The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.¶

In many cases, a versioning-aware client might want to display/include the URI of the version it's editing while it's being edited. For instance, an editor might include this as meta information, or the author of a document might want to know the URI of the version before it's checked in. A well-known example is the W3C way of referring to document versions in recommendations: it contains references to "the current version", to "this version" and to the "previous version". Something like this is currently impossible with the current draft version of WebDAV deltaV [deltaV], as the version URI is determined at the time of CHECKIN.¶

Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to the WebDAV versioning (delta-V) working group at ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org, which may be joined by sending a message with subject "subscribe" to ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org.¶

Discussions of the delta-V working group are archived at URL: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-dav-versioning/.¶

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].¶

In many cases, a versioning-aware client might want to display/include the URI of the version it's editing while it's being edited. For instance, an editor might include this as meta information, or the author of a document might want to know the URI of the version before it's checked in. A well-known example is the W3C way of referring to document versions in recommendations: it contains references to "the current version", to "this version" and to the "previous version". Something like this is currently impossible with the current draft version of WebDAV deltaV [deltaV], as the version URI is determined at the time of CHECKIN.¶

This specification builds on the infrastructure provided by the WebDAV Versioning Protocol, adding support for servers willing to compute an "expected CHECKIN URI" upon CHECKOUT, and using this URI at time of CHECKIN.¶

A client may ask for an "expected CHECKIN URI" upon CHECKOUT. This is done by placing DAV:compute-expected-checkin-URI as top-level element into the request body. The server is free to either ignore the request, or to return it's best guess about what the URI for a version resource created upon CHECKIN would be.¶

The client can detect the "expected CHECKIN URI" by parsing the response body for a top-level element called DAV:expected-checkin-URI.¶

A client may submit the "expected CHECKIN URI" (obtained during CHECKOUT) upon a CHECKIN by placing it into a top-level DAV:expected-checkin-URI element in the request body. A server may ¶

• simply ignore the presence of this information or
• use the information and try to checkin the resource using the "expected checkin URI" as location for the version resource. A failure to create a version resource at the "expected checkin URI" MUST cause the operation to fail with a status code of 403 (forbidden) and a response body containing the top-level element DAV:cannot-assign-expected-version-URI. In addition, a server MAY return a new "expected checkin URI" in it's response body.

This specification does introduce new protocol elements for the request and response bodies for CHECKIN and CHECKOUT.¶

Clients not aware of this specification will never submit the new protocol elements in a request and therefore never will see the new response elements.¶

Servers not aware of this specification will ignore the additional two request body elements which is legal behaviour according to this protocol (indicating that the protocol extension is not available).¶

This proposal builds on [deltaV], and inherits its internationalizability.¶

This proposal does not introduce any new IANA considerations, since it does not specify any new namespaces (in the general sense), but merely uses existing ones.¶

To be supplied by the RFC Editor.¶

To be supplied by the RFC Editor.¶

Copyright © The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.¶

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