ActiveResource Question

rubyonrails-core
1

I was just browsing through the ActiveResource code and I wonder why the use of .xml throughout on the URLs? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have ActiveResource set the content type to application/xml and then use paths without the extensions?

Sincerely, Anthony Eden

2

I was just browsing through the ActiveResource code and I wonder why the use of .xml throughout on the URLs? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have ActiveResource set the content type to application/xml and then use paths without the extensions?

In general, I think we're moving away from the idea of using the Accept header as the primary way of determining the content type. The extension makes a lot of things simpler. Including page caching, scanning logs (you can easily tell HTML requests apart from XML ones), and off-hand exploration (curl http://example.com/people.xml).

So given that direction, I want to make sure that Active Resource is encouraging that behavior.

3

Anthony Eden wrote:

I was just browsing through the ActiveResource code and I wonder why the use of .xml throughout on the URLs? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have ActiveResource set the content type to application/xml and then use paths without the extensions?

I believe it was David in his presentation "Discovering a World of Resources on Rails", that made a good point about the use of extensions that put any concerns I initially had to rest. It went something like, xml is a good extension because it represents the actual content vs. an extension like php, asp, etc. which represent which scripting language was used on the server side.

4

It still seems wrong to me, since the resource is the same, just a different representation of it, and thus it would seem that they should be represented by the same URI.

If the decision has already been made then so be it, I can live with it, but I still question it.

Sincerely, Anthony Eden

5

It still seems wrong to me, since the resource is the same, just a different representation of it, and thus it would seem that they should be represented by the same URI.

We are indeed bending the notion of a resource. But I think the trade-offs make it worth it.