[Engine-devel] planned changes for api capabilities resource

[Geert Jansen]

On 05/29/2012 03:44 PM, Michael Pasternak wrote:
> On 05/29/2012 04:14 PM, Geert Jansen wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 05/29/2012 12:12 PM, Michael Pasternak wrote:
>>
>>> there is no point in using this resource programmatically, as it only contains enumerations
>>> available in the system for given version and some other metadata,
>>>
>>> i.e it used by developers during the coding and it's not real system resource.
>>
>> I'm not convinced that that is true. For example, applications can use the "power_managers" and "cpus" elements to prepopulate lists in a user interface for example.
>
> this is good example indeed, then what about leaving /capabilities as is [1]
> only adding single resource retrieval capability [2] to comply with collection/resource
> pattern?
>
> [1]
>
> <capabilities>
>    <version major="3" minor="1">
>      ...
>    </version>
>    <version major="3" minor="1">
>      ...
>    </version>
>    ...
> </capabilities>
>
> [2]
>
>    /api/capabilities/UUID
>
>    <version major="3" minor="1" id=UUID>
>      ...
>    </version>

It would work from a compatibility point of view. However - to be honest 
- i would leave it as it is now. You also have non-version specific 
capabilities there, that do not fit any model. In my view there is no 
way to get to a clean design here.

The way i look at /api/capabilities is that is is a single global 
singleton resource. It isn't a collection, and neither a resource in a 
collection.

Regards,
Geert