Compounding of HTTP authoring protocol

• US 20070050512A1
• Filed: 08/31/2005
• Published: 03/01/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Paulus, Jay, Subbarayan, Sundar, McAteer, Sean, Kruse, David, Mohamed, Ahmed, Watson, Andrew, Fresenhahn, Dustin, Chintalapati, V.R.
• Granted Patent: US 7,600,030 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/230
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

Conventions for extending compounded web authoring methods to a web authoring protocol such as WebDAV. More particularly, a request can be provided with special header information to signify a method compounded with a method indicated by a verb in the request. Techniques for clients and servers to use the web authoring extensions. Extended error handling to allow servers to provider richer web authoring error information to clients.

Claims

1. A volatile or non-volatile machine-readable media storing information to enable a device to perform a process for servicing requests, the process comprising:

handling standard HTTP get requests, standard HTTP post requests, and standard HTTP options requests;

handling requests that conform to an HTTP authoring protocol, the requests comprising put requests, copy requests, move requests, propfind requests, and proppatch requests; and

handling compounded authoring requests that do not conform to the HTTP authoring protocol, the compounded requests comprising put+proppatch requests and post+propfind requests.

2. A media according to claim 1, the process further comprising performing put functionality and proppatch functionality responsive to a put+proppatch request, or performing get functionality and propfind functionality responsive to a get+propfind request, or performing post functionality and propfind functionality responsive to a post+propfind request.

3. A media according to claim 1, where the handled requests that do not conform to the HTTP authoring protocol further comprises requests that, in single requests, specify both a post, get, or put operation, and a lock, unlock, or lock refresh operation.

4. A media according to claim 1, wherein the process further comprises responding to an HTTP OPTIONS request by generating a response that includes header information indicating support for single requests with compounded authoring requests.

5. A media according to claim 1, wherein the compounded authoring requests comprise a method field conforming to the HTTP authoring protocol and a header name or header field not defined by the HTTP authoring protocol.

6. A media according to claim 1, the process further comprising including a set of properties and a resource in a body of a response message.

7. A volatile or non-volatile medium for storing digital data, the medium storing an HTTP request indicating methods of a standard public protocol extending an HTTP, where the standard public protocol defines methods and headers for remotely manipulating resources on an HTTP server, the stored HTTP request comprising:

a first method indicator indicating a first method, where the first method is specified by the HTTP or the standard public protocol extending the HTTP, and where the first method indicator conforms to the HTTP or the standard public extension of the HTTP; and

a second method indicator indicating a second method, where the second method is specified by the public-standard extension of the HTTP.

8. A volatile or non-volatile medium according to claim 7, wherein the second method indicator comprises a header in the HTTP request.

9. A volatile or non-volatile medium according to claim 7, wherein the standard public extension of the HTTP does not specify compound authoring operations in a single request message.

10. A volatile or non-volatile medium according to claim 7, wherein the first method indicator comprises a GET, POST, or PUT verb and the second method comprises a locking or properties method directed to a server resource.

11. A volatile or non-volatile medium according to claim 10, wherein the standard public protocol only specifies atomic authoring methods.

12. A server apparatus comprising the medium according to claim 7 and configured to receive the HTTP request and perform the first method and the second method in the HTTP request.

13. A client apparatus comprising the medium according to claim 7 and configured to generate the HTTP request.

14. A volatile or non-volatile storage for use with a processing device and storing information for enabling the processing device to perform a process, the process comprising:

generating an HTTP request, where the HTTP request comprises a method field, a plurality of header fields, and header information;

where

the method field comprises a verb that indicates a method defined by a distributed authoring protocol that extends an HTTP, and the verb conforms to the distributed authoring protocol;

where

the plurality of header fields comprise header field names and header field values, and the header fields conform to the HTTP and/or the distributed authoring protocol;

where

the header information comprises a header field name or a header field value, either of which indicates another method defined by the distributed authoring protocol; and

where

having the header information and the method field in the same HTTP request does not conform to the distributed authoring protocol.

15. A medium according to claim 14, wherein the distributed authoring protocol comprises a standard public protocol.

16. A medium according to claim 14, wherein the verb comprises “

get”

, “

post”

, or “

put”

, and wherein the other method comprises a lock method, or an unlock method, or a lock refresh method, or a property setting method, or a property get method.

17. A medium according to claim 14, wherein the header information comprises a header field name not defined by the HTTP or the distributed authoring protocol.

18. A medium according to claim 14, wherein the header information comprises a value in a header field body.

19. A medium according to claim 14, wherein the distributed authoring protocol defines methods for creating, changing, and moving documents or folders on an HTTP server.

20. A medium according to claim 14, wherein the distributed authoring protocol comprises a version of the WebDAV protocol.