Re: [apps-discuss] Scope of RFC3986 and successor - what is a URI?

[<[e-mail]>]

From: Sam Ruby

> I have trouble with the words "existing *spec-compliant* implementations".

> Either that term is meaningless, or I have yet to find one.



>I've taken a look at a lot of libraries that produce and consume URIs 
>(some call them URLs, but lets not worry about that for the moment).  I 
>have yet to find one that is spec compliant.



Again I can only speak for the tests that you are doing on the csharp implementation, but the test results are far from conclusive when it comes to comparing against RFC 3986.  From looking at your makefile, I’m making a guess that you are using mono to build the csharp code.  The System.Uri class is actually part of the .net framework.  Currently there are multiple versions/editions of the .net framework in addition to the mono version.  Even within the Microsoft .net framework there are configuration settings that control URI parsing behavior


You can turn on IRI compliant parsing with a global setting.  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb882600(v=vs.110).aspx  The default of this global setting was changed from false to true on the move from .Net 4.0 to 4.5.


You can also configure all kinds of other behavior related to URI parsing

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb882619%28v=vs.110%29.aspx


My reason for bringing up these details is because I believe that declaring RFC 3986 invalid because implementations don't match its behavior is self-defeating.  IMHO, a spec should be a goal that implementations aim for, not a reflection of the behavior of an implementation that currently has the biggest market share.


Having said all this, I will try and run your tests on various versions of Microsoft’s .net framework and see how much the results deviate.  I did try running your C# tests, but they are based on a JSON file that I believe gets created by some javascript that I didn’t find.  My js skills are less than stellar!


Darrel