Subject: inconsistent reporting of DAV:error inside multistatus responses

From: "Paritosh Shah" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 13:39:43 +0530

Hi all,

There are a few inconsistencies in the way DAV:error is to be reported
inside a multi-status response as per different RFCs.

According to RFC3253 ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3253#section-1.6 ) :-
"In a 207 Multi-Status response, the DAV:error element would appear in
the appropriate DAV:responsedescription element."
(RFC3744 also follows this definition)
Example - http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3744#section-5.1.2

According to RFC2518bis
(http://www.greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-webdav-rfc2518bis-latest.html#pre_post)
"In a 207 Multi-Status response, the XML element MUST appear inside an
'error' element in the appropriate 'propstat or 'response' element
depending on whether the condition applies to one or more properties or
to the resource as a whole"
Example -
http://www.greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-webdav-rfc2518bis-latest.html#DELETE-example

Do both types need to be supported ( depending on the request - basic
vs versioning ) ? Or, after 2518bis is published, would it supercede
3253's definition ?

Thanks,
Paritosh.

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:36:25 +0200

> inside a multi-status response as per different RFCs.

Yes. See also 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc4918.html#rfc.section.F.1.p.2>:

"This specification adopts the error marshalling extensions and the 
"precondition/postcondition" terminology defined in [RFC3253] (see 
Section 16). Related to that, it adds the "error" XML element inside 
multistatus response bodies (see Section 14.5, however note that it uses 
a format different from the one recommended in RFC 3253)."

> vs versioning ) ? Or, after 2518bis is published, would it supercede

No, as far as I can tell, the intent was to change it, thus servers 
should just implement what RFC4918 says. Of course this means that 
RFC4918 should have stated "Updates RFC3253". This was reported as issue 
<http://ietf.osafoundation.org:8080/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=258> in 
February, but unfortunately not fixed (similarly to lots of other 
issues...).

Best regards, Julian