Question about the On Linking Alternative Representations TAG Finding

Is it ever appropriate to configure content negotiation on the
*representation-specific URIs*? So, if someone requests the specific URI
for representation_1, but the Accept header indicates a preference for
representation_3, should content negotiation kick in and representation_3
be served instead?

If your url is the representation-specific one, then the conneg would fail
if the content-type of /resource.html is text/html and the Accept: only
contains application/xhtml+xml, as the representation is not the resource
and the url you requested is the one of the representation, not the
resource. I would return a 406.

I'd understand the reasoning as being that if you dereference /resource.html
and get a 200 you can assert it is a document, if you were to conneg to
another url from the specific url you loose that assertion as defined in
httpRange-14

Sebastien Lambla

Jul 31, 2008, at 1:23 PM, Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote:
>>
I think serving the JSN is the best option. Serving HTML from /
resource.json would defeat the purpose of having a JSN-specific
URI. It is quite likely that the user pasted the JSN URI into a
browser to test it, and *wants* to see the JSN that is returned.
Everyone knows how to paste a URI into a browser; few know how to
configure their browsers to specify their desired MIME types.

I don't see how the best option is to ignore the accept header. If
the accept header says to accept only html then you shouldn't respond
with a different mime type as if that was an appropriate response.
The 406 or 30x responses make more sense.

It's like saying, in a negotiation, that it's a fine thing to ignore
other negotiator and do what you want. Its not much of a negotiation
in that case.

-Alan