Re: [webfinger] feedback for multiple "rel"

Indeed… RFC 3986 also shows that spaces must be percent-encoded before they are considered a valid URI.

Anyway, I’m open to going either way.  The -02 draft said described a single “rel” parameters as “space-separated list of link relations”.  Of course, that would be escaped before being put into a GET… that goes without saying, really.

Which way do folks want it?  I recall arguing to keep it this way before, but I was successfully pushed to change it.

We might have to wait a bit for folks to reply given this is the weekend and a holiday weekend, at that.

Paul

From: James M Snell [mailto:jasnell@gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 8:43 PM
To: Paul E. Jones
Cc: nov matake; Melvin Carvalho; webfinger@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [webfinger] feedback for multiple "rel"

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 5:30 PM, Paul E. Jones <paulej@packetizer.com> wrote:

That depends on where they’re used.  If I tell you the “rel” value is “http://example.com/first one”, I don’t escape that as I write it.  Or are you saying there is text somewhere that already makes that, as written, illegal?

Yes. RFC 3987. That is, so long as the character separating the "first" and the "one" is an ASCII Space (0x20). IRI's allow for a range of space-like characters, such as a nonbreaking space (0xA0) but strongly recommends that those be pct-encoded. Whitespace of any type is explicitly disallowed in URI's.

I’m quite favorable to a space-separated list of rel values in a single rel parameter, too.  I was concerned before that spaces would present an issue, but figured we could either we make spaces illegal in rel values (which we can do since those are fabricated things!) or we double-escape.  My preference is a single escape and a single rel parameter and spaces are illegal in the “rel” values themselves.

Double-escaping is really a separate issue, as there may be lots of reasons why escaping is used, not just whitespace. Best to just treat that as a separate issue. Just say that the link rels are a list of 0x20 separated values and that the 0x20 must be pct-encoded, and go with that.. e.g. 

  http://example.org/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:foo <http://example.org/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:foo&rel=abc%20def%20http://example.org/foo> &rel=abc%20def%20http://example.org/foo

Would be rel=["abc","def","http://example.org/foo"]

All done.

- James

But, the forces that be pushed pretty hard to change from &rel=token1%20token to &rel=token1&rel=token2.  At the end of the day, it makes no difference to me since I just need to know which way to deal with it.

So Ruby can really only support only a single parameter with a given name?  It will not collect those into an array or anything?

Paul

From: James M Snell [mailto:jasnell@gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 7:51 PM
To: Paul E. Jones
Cc: nov matake; Melvin Carvalho; webfinger@ietf.org

Subject: Re: [webfinger] feedback for multiple "rel"

Spaces in rel values are already illegal.. specifically, spaces are disallowed in registered link relations and non-escaped spaces are disallowed in absolute IRI's.. A comma delimited list of rel's is better than multiple individual parameters.. even with the potential need for double encoding.

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Paul E. Jones <paulej@packetizer.com> wrote:

If we made it a requirement that “rel” values have no spaces (which I would argue is a damn good thing for many reasons) then we would not have to double-encode.

Paul

From: webfinger-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:webfinger-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of nov matake
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 11:12 AM
To: Melvin Carvalho

Cc: webfinger@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [webfinger] feedback for multiple "rel"

BTW, why double encoding lead "problems with things like canonical urls and search engines"?

Can you provide more details?

If 2 rel included, the response would be different than when only 1 rel given.

So I feel those 2 are not the same, and can be indexed as 2 resources..

On 2012/12/23, at 0:44, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:

On 22 December 2012 05:48, nov matake <matake@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I have a comment for they way to specify multiple "rel" values.

As a ruby library developer, my main target is rails developers.
Since rails can't handle multiple same query keys, developers will need to hack query params parser in rails middleware layer.
I can easily imagine it'll be an annoying part to support webfinger in rails.

Is the multiple "rel" case can be a space-delimitered (or some other character) strings like multiple redirect_uri in OAuth2?
Or any reason for putting multiple same keys in query parameters?

each time you delimit a list, you have to be able to escape the delimiter, which can be a pain and also leads to problems with things like canonical urls and search engines

can you use mod_rewrite?

Cheers,

Nov Matake
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