Subject: RFC 5995 on Using POST to Add Members to Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Collections

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 09:24:37 -0700 (PDT)

A new Request for Comments is now available in online RFC libraries.

        RFC 5995

        Title:      Using POST to Add Members 
                    to Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning 
                    (WebDAV) Collections 
        Author:     J. Reschke
        Status:     Standards Track
        Stream:     IETF
        Date:       September 2010
        Mailbox:    [email-masked]
        Pages:      12
        Characters: 21591
        Updates/Obsoletes/SeeAlso:   None

        I-D Tag:    draft-reschke-webdav-post-08.txt

        URL:        http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5995.txt

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Extensions for the Web
Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) do not define the
behavior for the "POST" method when applied to collections, as the
base specification (HTTP) leaves implementers lots of freedom for the
semantics of "POST".

This has led to a situation where many WebDAV servers do not
implement POST for collections at all, although it is well suited to
be used for the purpose of adding new members to a collection, where
the server remains in control of the newly assigned URL.  In fact,
the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) uses POST exactly for that
purpose.  On the other hand, WebDAV-based protocols, such as the
Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV), frequently require clients
to pick a unique URL, although the server could easily perform that
task.

This specification defines a discovery mechanism through which
servers can advertise support for POST requests with the
aforementioned "add collection member" semantics.  [STANDARDS TRACK]

This is now a Proposed Standard Protocol.

STANDARDS TRACK: This document specifies an Internet standards track
protocol for the Internet community,and requests discussion and suggestions
for improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the Internet
Official Protocol Standards (STD 1) for the standardization state and
status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

This announcement is sent to the IETF-Announce and rfc-dist lists.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, see
  http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
  http://mailman.rfc-editor.org/mailman/listinfo/rfc-dist

For searching the RFC series, see http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfcsearch.html.
For downloading RFCs, see http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html.

Requests for special distribution should be addressed to either the
author of the RFC in question, or to [email-masked].  Unless
specifically noted otherwise on the RFC itself, all RFCs are for
unlimited distribution.

The RFC Editor Team
Association Management Solutions, LLC