Hi Bertrand,

On 24 November 2011 11:48, Bertrand Delacretaz <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Enrico,
>
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Enrico Daga <[email protected]> wrote:
> ...
>>> 2) Watch for job completion
>>>
>>> GET /jobs/1234
> ...
>>> Body contains a link to the job output, for example /jobs/1234/output.txt
> ...
>
>> In the current implementation the Future<?> object used to monitor the
>> status cannot access the Job/Result object before it is complete, so
>> it cannot know the location of the response before. I have thought a
>> solution, anyway, to let the JobManager manage a mapping between
>> ID/Locations delegating to a Job.buildResponseLocation(String jobId)
>> before starting the job...
>
> Ok, at the interface design level I'd say "I don't care" ;-)
>
> As you say, the job manager should keep a mapping that allows for
> output.txt to point to the right data, and if needed output.txt can
> also do an http redirect to the right location.
Yes
>
>> ...So, the info should include:
>> - Status (running|finished)
>> - Location
>> - Accept
>> - Delete info...
>
> Ok, for Location and Accept I suggest (example):
>
> link rel=job-output type=text/plain href=/jobs/1234/output.txt
> link rel=job-output type=application/json href=/jobs/1234/output.json
> etc..
Actually the Jobs rest service does not support the handling of the
output, but just returns infos about the job.
I think that the output link should point to the original rest
service. We should assume that who starts the job knows the rest
interface needed to obtain the result, since different services
accepts different content type and support different jersey writers
(but maybe you were assuming this already, and write /jobs/1234/output
as example...).
The Jobs service will represent the job and explain how to obtain the
result, in the way you suggested for HTML requests and in a JSON
format, if requested.

>
>>
>>>
>>> 3) Read job output
>>> GET to the path returned in 2), /jobs/1234/output.txt in this example.
>>> Might return 404 as long as the job is not finished, with HTML or JSON
>>> content that points to the parent job resource, /jobs/1234.
>> In this we can distinguish non existent resources and non complete
>> jobs only by parsing the content. Could make sense add a
>> Content-Location[1] header pointing to the job, if it is not ready?
>> That should provide information about the job status (in the future
>> progress monitoring, for example) and could help distinguish non ready
>> jobs output and non existent resources...
>
> I'm not a fan of http headers to indicate application-level
> state...that's not browser-friendly.
>
> How about this:
>
> GET /jobs/1234 returns job info with a link rel=output to 
> /jobs/1234/output.txt
> GET /jobs/1234/output.txt returns 404 if job not finished
> GET /jobs/1234/output.txt returns 204 if job finished but produced no output

While I agree on the 204 addition for empty responses, this does not
solve the 404 ambiguity (non existant resource / non finished job), am
I wrong? And, adding a Content-Location header does not prevent us to
also include a body with a JSON or HTML description of the status with
a reference to the job.
Since this step - IMHO - is demanded to each single service, we must
only agree on the requirements they must supply (and maybe prepare a
reusable library to easily satisfy it - /jobs/webutils).

For the moment, the /reasoners/jobs/324234 endpoint (for obtaining the
output of a reasoners job) returns 404 + content-location header +
body with description or 200 on success + result.

In the meantime I have committed a first implementation in
commons/jobs/api and commons/jobs/web (I will include README soon).
The /jobs endpoint supports a way of creating test jobs, to test the
service and provide an exemplary implementation for the endpoints that
want to exploit it:

- /jobs/test -> 201 Created, with location /jobs/1234
- /jobs/1234 -> 200 With info and link to output
- /jobs/test/1234 handles the output, 404+explanations and link to job
or 200 if ready (with result)

cheers

Enrico

>
> This will work both from a browser and from better http clients, WDYT?
>
> Ciao,
> -Bertrand
>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.14



-- 
Enrico Daga

--
http://www.enridaga.net
skype: enri-pan

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