[thelist] REST RPC upload

[Bill Moseley]

No feedback here.  Was this too wordy/confusing?  Or does nobody have any
suggestions for a REST/JSON API to support uploads?

Thanks,

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 7:08 AM, Bill Moseley <moseley at hank.org> wrote:

> We are adding a REST API that uses JSON for the serialization of the
> request (i.e. what would be the posted parameters in a urlencoded web post).
>
> The API needs to accept file uploads.
>
> Each file uploaded requires additional meta data such as filename,
> last-modified time, author, etc.  None of that meta data is used as a
> primary key.  The application must examine the upload *and* associated meta
> data and either may reject the upload based on any of the data or accept it
> and create a new primary key.  In the REST API this would be a POST and the
> response would return either failure or the location of the newly created
> entity (URL to access the upload).
>
> The web application uses 'multipart/form-data' to serialize the request,
> which is designed just for this. The web interface also allow submitting
> multiple uploads in the same request, which is no problem.
>
> My question is how should the REST-based API for this kind of file upload
> look?
>
>
> The requirement that the request includes both the upload file data and the
> associated meta data is what I'm having a problem with.  I could, of course,
> just include the file data in the JSON like any other parameter (like author
> or filename) but that has the potential to make the JSON request body very
> large.  The JSON tools I've looked at require that the entire JSON string be
> in memory which is not desirable, especially if the upload file is big.
>
>
> I asked similar question on another list, but it was more implementation
> specific.  Sorry for any duplicates.  I want to look at how the API should
> look and then work on how to implement in a way that will work technically
> for our servers.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> --
> Bill Moseley
> moseley at hank.org
>



-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org