[Geoserver-users] Some feedback on the rest module (part two)

[Andrea A. <aa...@op...>]

Hi,
some more feedback.

* when an exception is thrown, the stack trace is not included in the
   output. It may be interesting to have it, at least when the
   "verbose exceptions" flag is checked in the config/server page
* the MapResource.handleGet assumes the map returned by getMap()
   is modifiable, and tries to put into it the page details as well.
   This breaks with the map I return, which happens to be an instance
   of Collections.singletonMap(K,V).
   More in general, it's probably not good practice since the
   resource may not be returning you a newly created hash map each
   time.
* using generic maps as resources means the order of generated xml
   cannot be controlled (and the same goes for any
   generated xml). Which makes me wonder if
   we should mandate a best practice of using LinkedHashMap or
   some other order preserving map.
   As an alternative, I guess it should not be too difficult to
   use stuff made up of java collections and java beans, and use
   introspection to figure out the fields.
* I noticed that in order to make the type parameter work, one
   has to remember and put .{type} at the end of the url...
   wondering if this should not be automatic? I did not know I
   had to, and I was left wondering why the type param did not
   work. Strange enough, I also tried appending ?type=xml to
   my request, but the result was still json?
* I see there is no handling for POST type requests, which I
   need because I'll have to generate multiple requests
   out of a single file upload. Now, in this case I'll
   have to return a list of the created resources, which is
   fine, but I'm wondering how to deal with the format.
   I guess that the same rules as GET might apply, so if you
   POST to resource.json you get back a json response,
   and if you POST to resource.xml you get back an xml response?

Will keep on trying to use the rest module, may send a
"part three" msg

Cheers
Andrea