Well-known URI for "home"

[dret]

as brought up in the discussion of #41, another helpful piece in the "home" puzzle could be to register a home well-known URI, so that developers liking this pattern for discovery can use an existing value.

[asbjornu]

I like this idea. Would you say it's okay for a well-known URI to do an HTTP 301 to i.e. / for applications where that make sense?

[dret]

On 2017-03-02 11:09, Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote: I like this idea. Would you say it's okay for a |well-known| URI to do an HTTP |301| to i.e. |/| for applications where that make sense?

without looking at that specific topic, i would think that as long as /well-known resources are properly behaving HTTP resources, they can do whatever their owner wants them to do. if you want to publish a /well-known/home resource because some services may use this for discovery, but you also firmly believe that your service's "root" resource *is* the service's home resource, then this might very well be the way to go.

[mnot]

What's the use case here?

We mint a well-known URI when it's not realistic to use a URL, because we just have a hostname and port to work with.

Is there a use case for home documents where you can't just give the user a URL?

[algermissen]

I have been using it in situations where the clients know/discover a bunch of other systems as just host and port information and then use the general well known location to proceed.

In combination with DNS SRV or DNS-SD based discovery I thing this would be useful.

Having said that, I see your point (and e.g. with DNS-SD there is also 'path' in the TXT record to communicate a path).

[mnot]

Current interpretation of the well-known URI spec by IETF folks is that it's only intended for places where a) the client can't get a full URL, or b) the well-known location has metadata about the whole origin.

This doesn't seem to fit into either. I can see that DNS-SD/SRV could use them, but the bar is being raised to require an actual, concrete use case.

I think that it'd make more sense for a particular API to register a well-known location if it meets the requirements above.

[algermissen]

As a note for future readers: I recently saw @dret has worked on a link-rel that serves the discovery purpose well https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wilde-service-link-rel

[dret]

On 2018-01-29 09:07, Jan Algermissen wrote: As a note for future readers: I recently saw @dret <https://github.com/dret> has worked on a link-rel that serves the discovery purpose well https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wilde-service-link-rel

- #191 addresses how those link relations might work with JSON home. - #213 questions whether `describedBy` is the best approach for linking related API-level resources from home documents.