Re: request for new forms submission consensus

marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
X-Delivered: at request of secret on dxcern.cern.ch
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 16:39:22 -0700
From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Message-id: <9310112339.AA17542@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: sanders@bsdi.com
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: request for new forms submission consensus 
In-reply-to: <9310111553.AA26916@austin.BSDI.COM>
References: <9310111553.AA26916@austin.BSDI.COM>

Tony Sanders writes:
> > All things being equal, I think I'd be happy with the current encoding
> > method (name=value&name=value with escaping) just slapped into the
> > body of an HTTP/1.0 'SUBMIT' request -- keeps things simple and
> > straightforward, avoids creating a new syntax, is known to properly
> > handle escaping issues, and servers and code already exist for
> > decoding/handling it.
> As you know I'm for just using the POST method.  See example below of how
> I think this should work.
> 
> As you can see I've used a "www" class content-type.  I think that it's
> important to allocate a www class for our internal protocol messages.
> A content-type of text/plain might have a different affect
> (like just sending the owner of the posted to document email, or
> maybe making an annotation).
> 
> If the form required authentication to submit then the user could edit
> the returned URL before the form was processed.
> 
> > To be honest, the idea of encoding it in some kind of SGML format does
> > not excite me in the least -- what would be the added value?
> Agreed.
> 
> Example form:
>     <FORM ACTION="http://www.bsdi.com/hyplan/sanders.html">

How about, then, <FORM ACTION="POST http://www.bsdi.com/hyplan/sanders.html">
in this case?  That meshes with the consensus we came to a while back
about using the URL encoding method only as a stopgap and adding
methods to the ACTION attribute in the future.  (Or, would be fine
with me to use a different attribute also -- whichever.)

>     <INPUT NAME="name">
>     </FORM>
> 
> Client:
>     POST /hyplan/sanders.html HTTP/1.0
>     Content-Length: 13
>     MIME-Version: 1.0
>     Content-type: www/form
> 
>     name=testing

Looks good, except -- is Content-Length to be required?  (And if so, why?)

> Server:
>     HTTP/1.0 201 URI follows
>     Last-modified: Sunday, 03-Oct-93 19:32:54 GMT
>     Date: Sunday, 03-Oct-93 19:37:52 GMT
>     Server: plexus/3.0i
>     Location: http://www.bsdi.com/forms/form000023.form
>     MIME-Version: 1.0
>     Content-type: text/html
> 
>     <TITLE>Posted</TITLE>
>     <A HREF="http://www.bsdi.com/forms/form000023.form">Retrieve
>     to lock and edit</A>

Cheers,
Marc