Internet DRAFT - draft-snell-atompub-link-extensions

draft-snell-atompub-link-extensions



Network Working Group                                           J. Snell
Internet-Draft                                              June 8, 2012
Updates: 4287 (if approved)
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: December 10, 2012


                          Atom Link Extensions
                 draft-snell-atompub-link-extensions-09

Abstract

   This specification adds additional attributes to the Atom Syndication
   Format link and content elements that may be used to express
   additional metadata about linked resources.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on December 10, 2012.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.




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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Notational Conventions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  Hash Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     3.1.  Computing Hash Digests  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     3.2.  The 'hash' attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   4.  The 'etag' attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   5.  The 'modified' attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   6.  The 'accessed' attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   9.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7





































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1.  Introduction

   This specification adds additional attribute to the Atom Syndication
   Format [RFC4287] link and content elements that may be used to
   express additional metadata about linked resources most specifically
   for the purpose of allowing a consuming application to detect whether
   a linked resource has potentially been modified since the link was
   established or whether the content of the linked resource has been
   correctly fetched as a result of dereferencing the link.


2.  Notational Conventions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, [RFC2119].

   This specification uses XML Namespaces [W3C.REC-xml-names-19990114]
   to uniquely identify XML element names.  It uses the following
   namespace prefix for the indicated namespace URI;

    "atom": "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"


3.  Hash Attributes

   Hash digest values are computed by the producers of Atom documents
   and are representative of the state of linked resources at a given
   point in time.  The intent of providing hash values is to allow
   consumers of the Atom document to later determine if linked resource
   have been modified since the document was produced.  There are,
   however, many factors that determine whether a consumer of a document
   will be capable of calculating a digest value identical to that
   specified in a hash attribute.  Accordingly, hash attribute values
   MUST be considered to be strictly advisory.  User agents SHOULD
   notify users when matching hash digest values cannot be computed but
   MUST NOT stop processing or signal an error.

3.1.  Computing Hash Digests

   When the resource referenced by atom:link or atom:content elements is
   retrievable using HTTP, hash digest values are computed by first
   performing an HTTP GET request on the URL specified by the @href or
   @src attributes, extracting the returned entity-body, then following
   the steps specified in Section 14.15 of [RFC2616].






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3.2.  The 'hash' attributes

   The 'hash' Attribute specifies a whitespace-delimited list of hash
   digest values calculated over the resource identified by the atom:
   link/@href or atom:content/@src attributes.  Each digest value is
   represented as a token identifying the hash algorithm and the hex-
   encoded digest separated by an ASCII colon (":").  The 'hash'
   attribute MAY appear as a child of the atom:link and atom:content
   elements.

     hash = attribute hash { digest-list }
     digest-list = digest-value *( LWSP digest-value )
     digest-value = token ":" 1*HEXDIG

   An example MD5 and SHA-256 digest of an enclosed MP3 file:

     <atom:link rel="enclosure"
       href="http://example.org/media/myfile.mp3"
       hash="md5:9e107d9d372bb6826bd81d3542a419d6
             sha-256:6bf05cbbde96d6...d5ffe91e29272d805c98b988dc" />

   This specification defines the following hash algorithm tokens:
   "md2", "md5", "sha-1", "sha-224", "sha-256", "sha-384", and "sha-
   512".  Additional hash algorithms MAY be used.


4.  The 'etag' attribute

   The 'etag' Attribute specifies an Entity Tag [RFC2616] for the
   resource identified by the atom:link or atom:content element as
   provided by the server hosting the resource.  The 'etag' attribute
   MAY appear as a child of the atom:link and atom:content elements.

     etag = attribute etag { entity-tag }

     entity-tag = [ weak ] opaque-tag
     weak       = "W/"
     opaque-tag = quoted-string
     quoted-string  = ( <"> *(qdtext | quoted-pair ) <"> )
     qdtext         = <any TEXT except <">>
     quoted-pair    = "\" CHAR

   An example weak entity tag for an enclosed MP3 file:

     <atom:link rel="enclosure"
        href="http://example.org/media/myfile.mp3"
        etag="W/&quot;xyzzy&quot;" />




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   Note that HTTP defines the Entity Tag production such that quotes are
   significant.  For example, the values "W/xyzzy" and W/"xyzzy"
   represent two distinctly different Entity Tags, the former being
   considered a "strong" entity tag, the latter a "weak" entity tag.
   The etag attribute value MUST include the appropriate double
   quotation marks.

   The presence and placement of the quotes in the entity tag value can
   introduce some difficulty when inserting the value into the etag
   attribute.  Producers of Atom documents must either use single quotes
   when specifying the value of the etag attribute, e.g.
   etag='W/"xyzzy"' or use the &quot; entity reference to escape the
   double quotes within the etag value, e.g. etag="W/&quot;xyzzy&quot;".
   A strong entity tag would be encoded as either etag='"xyzzy"' or
   etag="&quot;xyzzy&quot;".


5.  The 'modified' attribute

   The 'modified' Attribute specifies the date and time when the
   resource identified by the atom:link or atom:content element was last
   modified.  The value MUST conform to the "date-time" production
   defined by [RFC3339].  An uppercase "T" character MUST be used to
   separate date and time, and an uppercase "Z" character MUST be
   present in the absence of a numeric time zone offset.  The 'modified'
   attribute MAY appear as a child of the atom:link and atom:content
   elements.

     modified = attribute modified { xsd:dateTime }

   An example last-modified attribute for an enclosed MP3 file:

     <atom:link rel="enclosure"
       href="http://example.org/media/myfile.mp3"
       modified="2010-12-12T12:12:12Z" />


6.  The 'accessed' attribute

   The 'accessed' Attribute specifies the most recent date and time when
   the resource identified by the atom:link or atom:content element was
   accessed by the producer of the Atom document.  The value MUST
   conform to the "date-time" production defined by [RFC3339].  An
   uppercase "T" character MUST be used to separate date and time, and
   an uppercase "Z" character MUST be present in the absence of a
   numeric time zone offset.  The 'accessed' attribute MAY appear as a
   child of the atom:link and atom:content elements.




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     accessed = attribute accessed { xsd:dateTime }

   An example accessed attribute for an enclosed MP3 file:

     <atom:link rel="enclosure"
       href="http://example.org/media/myfile.mp3"
       accessed="2010-12-12T12:12:12Z" />

   The intent of the 'accessed' attribute is to allow the Atom document
   producer to establish an explicit point-in-time at which additional
   metadata about the linked resource was established.  For instance, if
   the 'accessed' attribute is used, a consuming user agent can assume
   that any hash attribute values, entity tags and modified timestamps
   were valid at the date and time specified by the 'accessed'
   attributes value.  If the 'accessed' attribute is not specified,
   consumers SHOULD use the value of the atom:updated element to
   determine the point-in-time at which the link metadata was considered
   to be valid.


7.  Security Considerations

   The 'hash', 'etag' and 'modified' attributes are intended to allow an
   Atom publisher the means of describing the state of a linked resource
   at a point-in-time -- usually at the moment specified by the
   'accessed' attribute or at the moment specified by the atom:updated
   element.  An Atom consumer that is aware of these attributes can use
   their values as an integrity check to determine if the linked
   resource has been modified since the attribute values were
   established by the publisher.

   The 'hash' attribute is intended for use when the publisher of an
   Atom document requires the ability to link to a specific version of a
   resource that is expected to remain stable and unchanged for a useful
   period of time.  If publishers fall into the habit of regularly
   including hash digests for resources whose states change frequently,
   there is a danger that consumers of feeds containing large numbers of
   invalid digests will simply begin to ignore them and completely
   undermine the utility of the attribute.


8.  IANA Considerations

   No IANA actions are required by this document.







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9.  Normative References

   [RFC1864]  Myers, J. and M. Rose, "The Content-MD5 Header Field",
              RFC 1864, October 1995.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [RFC3339]  Klyne, G., Ed. and C. Newman, "Date and Time on the
              Internet: Timestamps", RFC 3339, July 2002.

   [RFC4287]  Nottingham, M., Ed. and R. Sayre, Ed., "The Atom
              Syndication Format", RFC 4287, December 2005.

   [W3C.REC-xml-names-19990114]
              Hollander, D., Bray, T., and A. Layman, "Namespaces in
              XML", World Wide Web Consortium FirstEdition REC-xml-
              names-19990114, January 1999,
              <http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114>.


Author's Address

   James M Snell

   Email: jasnell@us.ibm.com
   URI:   http://ibm.com




















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