Rowan, If I understand you correctly here, what you are saying is that openid.ns.* prefixes work almost identically to XML namespace (xmlns) prefixes, i.e.:
* the prefix is never globally defined by dynamically defined on a per-instance basis * thus you don't know what the prefix is in a specific OpenID message until you parse the message. Do I have that right? If so, I agree, I hadn't gleaned that out of earlier readings of the spec, and I think it should be emphasized (in fact I'd recommend the analogy to xmlns prefixes. =Drummond -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rowan Kerr Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 5:05 PM To: OpenID specs list Subject: Extensions key prefix In all my time spent reading and implementing the OpenID Authn 2 spec, this particular detail escaped me. Johnny Bufu pointed it out to me the other day while we were going through some Attribute Exchange tests. http://openid.net/specs/openid-authentication-2_0-11.html#extensions "To associate keys with a Type URI, establish an alias by adding a key prefixed with "openid.ns." and ending with the alias text whose value is the Type URI." I never picked up on the fact that these aliases can be dynamic on a per-server or actually per-messsage basis, and assumed the key prefixes listed in the extension specs were what one could expect to see in a message. This affects all proposed extensions to OpenID 2.0... i.e. While the spec for Attribute Exchange uses "openid.ax" for its message keys, and Simple Reg 1.1 uses "openid.sreg", in reality the keys received in a message are determined by whatever comes after the key openid.ns.* where the value is the URI of the extension putting data into those keys. So, openid.ns.ax = http://openid.net/srv/ax/1.0 implies openid.ax.required. But it could just as easily be openid.ns.foo = http://openid.net/srv/ ax/1.0 in which case, your sreg values would be in keys named openid.foo.* Is this clear to everyone else? It makes sense to me now, but I think it should be made more clear in the main spec, and perhaps the extension specs could move away from hardcoding the openid.ns.* and use an obvious placeholder string. -Rowan _______________________________________________ specs mailing list specs@openid.net http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs _______________________________________________ specs mailing list specs@openid.net http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs