Critical Description
The SlingPostServlet is anything but REST-ful. For example, it is possible to have a request for resource /a which at the same might cause a resoure /x/y to be moved to /e/f and much nastier things. Providing an accurate response to such operations and acting upon such responses is almost impossible if not introducing multi-status ...
Therefore, the SlingPostServlet should be simplified as follows:
- The servlet is modified to execute a single operation per request, where an operation may be create/modify, delete, move and copy. The actual operation to execute is indicated by a new parameter ":operation" which can take the following values:
<unset> or empty string - create/modify request
"delete" - delete current resource
"move" - move current resource
"copy" - copy current resource
In addition, this mechanism could be implemented such, that the actual operation might be extensible.
- All operations act on the current resource - request.getResource(). The delete, move and copy operations fail if the current resource is a non-existing resource.
- The distinction between create and just modify depends on the resource: If the current resource does not exist yet it is created. Special treatment for resource creation happens if the path is
terminated by a slash (as proposed by Carsten and Roy in earlier messages) or by a slash-star (/*, like currently). The name of the newly created node is defined as it is today: using special parameters :name, :nameHint and well-known content such as title.
We keep the /* notation to support requests like /*.print.a4.html.
- Some operations (create, move, copy) handle a parameter ":order", which defines the ordering relation of the newly created item (this is the same behaviour as in the current implementation)
- The copy and move operation by default fail if an item already exists at the destination. This behaviour may be overwritten by setting the ":replace" paramter to "true". This replaces the current "replace" value for the :copyFlags and :moveFlags parameter.
- The copy and move operations require another parameter ":dest", which is the destination path name of the resource. The operation fails if the parameter is missing.
- The ":redirect" parameter causes the client to be redirected to the desired target in case the operation was successfull. This is the same behaviour as today.
- The ":status" parameter causes the HTTP status code to be non-standards-compliant: If the parameter value is "browser", that status code is always 200/OK, even in case of failure. Otherwise the status code will reflect the actual status.
- Regardless of the ":status" parameter value, the response is always the complete run-down of the operation executed with the actual status code and eventual exceptions - unless of course if the client has been redirected after successfull operation and instructed to so by the :redirect parameter. This is the same behaviour as today.
- Run-Down of some status codes expected:
200/OK - if :status==browser or if the operation succeeded
201/CREATED - required by a successful move or copy, when the destination
did not exist yet. Also sent when the current resource was created
404/NOT FOUND - if the current resource is missing for copy, move, delete
412/PRECONDITION FAILED - if the destination for the copy or move
operation exists and the :replace parameter is not set to true
(this is consistent with the WebDAV spec for COPY/MOVE in this
situation).
302/FOUND - aka temporary redirect, if the operation succeeded and the
:redirect parameter is set
500/INTERNAL SERVER ERROR - in case of any processing error,
e.g. an exception being thrown
Attachments
Issue Links
- is related to
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SLING-455 Extend SlingPostServlet to support references to existing repository content
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- Closed
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