Re: [netconf] restconf 'get' on non-presence container

Hi Kent,

I don't think that is the same conclusion that I reached with that thread - I'm not convinced that there was an agreed conclusion, different folks seem to different opinions on this.  I support you opening an issue on the YANG issue tracker to see if we more tightly specify this behaviour for clients.

My interpretation is that the current answer is (3), i.e. it up to the implementation.

I suspect that the answer may depend on how defaults are handled, and it may also depend on which datastore the query is being made against.

Thanks,
Rob

From: netconf <netconf-bounces@ietf.org> On Behalf Of Kent Watsen
Sent: 21 June 2019 22:25
To: netconf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [netconf] restconf 'get' on non-presence container

Reviewing the very long "What should a server response be?" thread from 2016-07-11, it seems that the answer might be:

    4) depends on client-usage history (i.e., sometimes
        404 and sometimes 200 with an empty response).

Specifically, it seems that servers proactively creating or removing NP-containers is not desirable.

PS: I created https://github.com/netmod-wg/yang-next/issues/88.

Kent // contributor

On Jun 21, 2019, at 10:41 AM, Kent Watsen <kent+ietf@watsen.net<mailto:kent+ietf@watsen.net>> wrote:

Given:

 module foo {
   ...
   container widgets {   <--- NOT a presence container
     list widget {
       ...
     }
   }
 }

Assuming no widgets have been configured, would a GET on "/foo:widgets"
return:

   1) 200 with an empty response (i.e., <widgets xmlns="..."/>
   2) 404 (Not Found)
   3) It's up to the implementation

With NETCONF, or RESTCONF when retrieving an ancestor of an
NP-container, it's clear that RFC 7950, Section 7.5.7 (XML
Encoding Rules) comes into play:

  If a non-presence container does not have any child nodes, the
  container may or may not be present in the XML encoding.

However, this question regards the GET being on the NP-container itself.
That is, it's not an encoding question so much as a protocol question.
RFC 8040 doesn't discuss this directly, but Section 4.3 (GET) says:

  If a retrieval request for a data resource represents an instance
  that does not exist, then an error response containing a "404 Not
  Found" status-line MUST be returned by the server.

Okay, so it does the NP-container "exist" or not?  RFC 7950, Section
7.5.1 (Containers with Presence) says:

  ...the [non-presence] container has no meaning of its own, existing
  only to contain child nodes.  In particular, the presence of the
  container node with no child nodes is semantically equivalent to the
  absence of the container node.

Kent

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