[Zope3-dev] Other (than GET and POST) HTTP Methods

[Shane Hathaway]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>> I don't understand.  Data you GET via HTTP is very often dynamically 
>> generated.  You can't expect to edit the dynamic results, PUT your 
>> changes, and have the server store what you really meant to change.  
>> So you must be talking about a more limited use case.
> 
> 
> I thought the idea behind ZPT's TAL and METAL was that you could do 
> precisely that.  But perhaps I misunderstood.

Yes, it was.  But that feature of ZPT has not been perfected, and no one 
knows quite how to fix it.  There are too many unanswered questions.

> 
> 
>>> *Shudder*  Why would you *want* to?
>>> IMO, WebDAV is *supposed* to be on the same port.  That's the whole 
>>> point.  It's an HTTP extension, not a replacement.
>>
>>
>> That's the intent of WebDAV, but WebDAV is flawed.  WebDAV makes no 
>> attempt to retrieve the real content rather than the generated 
>> content, so workarounds have to be devised.
> 
> 
> I thought WebDAV included a way to find the "source" of a document?

Well, I just learned that clients supporting the latest standard have a 
way, so the flaw in the standard has been rectified:

http://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/protocol/rfc2518.html#PROPERTY_source

It's going to be a while before all clients support it, though.

Shane