On Nov 5, 2009, at 10:52 PM, Bob Aman wrote:
>> [Comment on the URI Template working draft]
>>
>> Is there any particular reason why the current draft suggests that
>> variables typed as lists (marked with @) be expanded so that the
>> variable name is followed by a generated numbering?
>>
>> The numbering scheme seems quite odd and specific (1-based with first
>> item unnumbered).
>>
>> For example, in the case of the ? operator:
>>
>> {?@list} ?list=val1&list2=val2&list3=val3
>>
>> Why not simply expand it as:
>>
>> ?list=val1&list=val2&list=val3
>>
>> This would still be a perfectly valid sequence of query parameters.
>> Or am I missing something obvious?
>
> I think the obvious objection is that many web frameworks (php, rails,
> app engine, etc) make the assumption that query parameter keys are
> unique, so method calls like `request.params["list"]` would probably
> return `val3` with no means of obtaining the array order or other
> values in the array without parsing the request URI manually. That
> said, I don't think the obvious objection is a good reason to choose
> what strikes me as the slightly less elegant option, and I would much
> prefer your expansion to the current one. URI templates aren't
> necessary to the function of every web application, frameworks can
> slowly adapt, and in the meantime, manually parsing the URI when
> necessary is fine with me.
Yes, it matches the obvious limitation in HTML and all of the
libraries that pre-parse query parameters into hash tables.
The names must be unique. More importantly, something like
form.cgi{?name,@address}
is such a common idiom that I figured it was worth capturing
in a short form. Almost all examples I've seen using that
kind of form use address, address2, address3 as the names.
However, I don't think this is a necessary feature for
uri-templates, so we could just remove it if folks disagree.
....Roy
