Re: [Exist-development] My vision about admin RESTful URLs

[Dmitriy S. <sha...@gm...>]

On Fri, 2009-11-27 at 13:33 +0000, Thomas White wrote:
> Dan,
>  
> Thank you for the feedback.
>  
> I can see your preference to the REST URL is /admin/{object}/{action} 
>  
> I would still prefer /admin/{module}/{object}/{action} 

For me (as linguist :) no differences between "object" & "module". To
make it flexible: 

/admin/{object}/{object}/{action}/{object}/{object}

The parsing is quite simple:
1. analyze first "object"s till get the module. (possible to omit)
2. "action" = function
3. second "object" - the information for function

That is very simple, the "action" split "object"s on "which" & "where".
The parsing time should be low too.

> We need to think about admin work as set of activities where different
> people will have access to different subset of possible actions. It is
> an exception, usually for small projects where one person is admin and
> he is responsible for all admin tasks. More common case is when we
> have more then one administrator. If we group common activities to a
> module we can easily grant access to this module and these
> activities. 
>  
> Conversely if we put all actions for an object in one
> place /admin/{object}/{action}  then it will be much more difficult or
> complex do define in details who can do what. 
>  
> We are discussing URLs here and the implementation of all actions for
> an object, say collection, can still be in a single module.
>  
> I do not really like the idea of receiving the list of possible
> actions when URL is /admin/collection. To request the list of action
> is an action and to me it looks like
>  /admin/{module}/collection/action-list. It can return the subset of
> the available actions for the context of the module combined with user
> credentials including groups and roles. This way we can control the
> access to the every action depending on who is asking
> 
> I not sure about the meaning of  "enable/disable collection
> operation".  Do you mean to allow the user to perform the actions or
> not? This could be a case only if we think admin vs non-admin
> users. In real life wе may have Backup Admin, User Admin, System
> admin and all of them may have different subset of actions. User admin
> does not need to be able to shutdown the server, change
> configuration or access the data in any collection.
>  
> I like your note about replacing 'do' with 'server' . Then we can
> have:
>  
> /admin/administration/server/restart
> /admin/administration/server/reload
> /admin/administration/server/shutdown
> /admin/administration/server/backup/{root-collection-of-the
> backup}[?to=c:/backups]
> /admin/administration/server/restore/{root-collection-of-the
> backup}?from=c:/backups/backup-file.zip
> /admin/administration/server/reindex/{collection-URI}

/admin/administration is tautology. we did definition area by "admin",
why redefine it again by administration. It can be /siteN/admin/....

Your idea is based on different users usage, but "server" for system
admin, "server/backup" backup admin.

My view:

/admin/system/restart
/admin/system/reload
/admin/system/shutdown
/admin/backup/{root-collection-of-the-backup}[?to=c:/backups]
/admin/restore/{root-collection-of-the-backup}?from=c:/backups/backup-file.zip
/admin/reindex/{collection-URI}

"system" -> module; "restart" -> function

"backup" -> module & function

If be honest, I like single "module & function" concept more that
"module & functions". It's simple in developing & understanding.

> I think we need an extra parameter 'mode' that will define what will
> be returned - XML, JSON, HTML, XForm.
>  
> About the log files viewer, I will be happy to put our heads together
> and come up with a simple and quick solution.

{action}/{object}/{object} should be ok here. 

/admin/log/period/eXist.log/{datetime}/{datetime}
/admin/log/tail/{log-id}

(funny, it can be /admin/eXist.log/period/{datetime}/{datetime} & it
possible to parse & "understand"! "log" miss, because of "eXist.log" -
it have single "meaning")

-- 
Cheers,

Dmitriy Shabanov

PS I what to try coding, any svn? under eXist one?