RFC : XML representation of a HTTP request

[Eric van der Vlist]

Hi,

In a java servlet environment, I have developed a mapping of the HTTP
request into a result tree fragment through sax events and I'd like to
have your feedback on the structure I am proposing.

Currently, this structure is something which, translated into XML, would
be like :

<request>
  <headers>
    <accept-charset>iso-8859-1,*,utf-8</accept-charset>
    <accept-language>en</accept-language>
    <host>xmlbinder</host>
    <cookie>Apache=192.127.127.3.2835094787032722</cookie>
    .../...
  </headers>
  <variables>
    <REQUEST_METHOD>GET<REQUEST_METHOD>
    <URI>/result-tree/example.xml</URI>
    <SCRIPT_NAME>/xmlbind/XSLServlet</SCRIPT_NAME>
    .../...
  </variables>
  <parameters>
    <x>2</x>
    <y>3</y>
  </parameters>
</request>

(It could be extended to the cookies as well.)

The names of the headers, variables or parameters is used as the name of
the entities.

The path to the variable "URI" is therefore : "/request/variables/URI".

Would it be better to have a common entity name and something like :

       <parameter name="x">2</parameter>

The path to the variable "URI" would then be  :
"/request/variables/variable[@name='URI']".

If it's the case and if we have different entity names for the
parameters, headers, variables (and later on cookies), do we need to
keep a structured path to these different entities since a path of 
"/request/variable[@name='URI']" would already be sufficient to
differentiate the variable "URI" from a possible parameter "URI" ?

And of course, If I am reinventing the wheel and if a XML schema to
represent a request context has already been defined, I'll be very glad
to know it !

Related links :

http://downloads.dyomedea.com/java/examples/xslservlet/result-tree/
	(the example with its code)

http://www.egroups.com/group/xml-tips/info.html
	(newly created discussion list for these "tips")


Thanks for your feedback.

Eric

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric van der Vlist                                              Dyomedea

http://www.dyomedea.com                          http://www.ducotede.com
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