On 10 Feb 2010, at 19:26, Nathan wrote:
From the client's POV, what's the difference between receiving a
406 (“I
don't have a format that you understand”) and a 200 with a non-
supported
Content-Type (“Here, take a look at this thing in a format that you
don't understand”)?
Ambiguity? a 4xx is a clear definate answer which can't be miss-read,
Yes.
and a 2xx indicates that you're giving back what the client asked for,
No. A 200 status code indicates that the response contains a
representation of the resource named by the requested URI. It does NOT
guarantee that the representation matches any of the Accept-* headers.
which you aren't. I pretty much equate it with asking for a pair of
red
socks and getting a response of "certainly sir" followed by some Y-
fronts.
Web servers don't respond with “certainly sir”, they respond with
“this is what we've got, take it or leave it.” That's how HTTP works.
Also, you usually don't know what a URI identifies before you actually
dereference it and see what comes back. When asking for red socks at
the Y-front stall, you can't really complain…
Best,
Richard
regards!
