well, after much research in many wrong directions i finally discovered
that the LINK/UNLINK mechanism i've been hoping for is specified in the
appendix to HTTP/1.1.
yes, i looked there many times, but missed it -- it's not in the table of
contents which lists all of the other methods by name. the more i thought
about it, the more i realized it must be somewhere. it's too simple and
too effective to have been missed.
so why aren't we discussing it here?
why don't robots use LINK/UNLINK?
if they store URLs then they would receive UNLINK if they used LINK. this
implies no overhead for them!
this would replace 99% of the ideas proposed for robots.txt! ;-)
perhaps the description of these methods in the spec is unclear.
certainly the description in my previous mail fits.
Robots who use Links, use LINK! :)
-john
------- draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-07 -------
19.6.1 Additional Request Methods
19.6.1.2 LINK
The LINK method establishes one or more Link relationships between the
existing resource identified by the Request-URI and other existing
resources. The difference between LINK and other methods allowing links
to be established between resources is that the LINK method does not
allow any message-body to be sent in the request and does not directly
result in the creation of new resources.
If the request passes through a cache and the Request-URI identifies a
currently cached entity, that entity MUST be removed from the cache.
Responses to this method are not cachable.
Caches that implement LINK should invalidate cached responses as defined
in section 13.10 for PUT.
19.6.1.3 UNLINK
The UNLINK method removes one or more Link relationships from the
existing resource identified by the Request-URI. These relationships may
have been established using the LINK method or by any other method
supporting the Link header. The removal of a link to a resource does not
imply that the resource ceases to exist or becomes inaccessible for
future references.
If the request passes through a cache and the Request-URI identifies a
currently cached entity, that entity MUST be removed from the cache.
Responses to this method are not cachable.
Caches that implement UNLINK should invalidate cached responses as
defined in section 13.10 for PUT.
------- draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-07 -------
_________________________________________________
This messages was sent by the robots mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail
to robots-request@webcrawler.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the body.
For more info see http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html