Independent Submission I. Dzmanashvili Request for Comments: 6861 January 2013 Category: Informational ISSN: 2070-1721 The "create-form" and "edit-form" Link Relations Abstract RFC 5988defined the waystandardized a means of indicating the relationships between resources on the Web. This specification defines link relation types that may be used to express the relationships between a resource and an input form for constructing data submissions. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at its discretion and makes no statement about its value for implementation or deployment. Documents approved for publication by the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6861. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Link Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.1. The "create-form" Link Relation Type . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.1.1. Using the "create-form" Link Relation . . . . . . . . . 3 3.2. The "edit-form" Link Relation Type . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2.1. Using the "edit-form" Link Relation . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.3. Error-Handling Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.1. The Link Relation Registration "create-form" . . . . . . . 5 4.2. The Link Relation Registration "edit-form" . . . . . . . . 5 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6. Internationalisation Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1. Introduction RFC 5988 [RFC5988]defined the waystandardized a means of indicating the relationships between resources on the Web. This specification defines link relation types that may be used to express the relationships between a resource and an input form for constructing data submissions. The "create-form" and "edit-form" link relations are intentionally generic, and they can be used with multiple media types in a wide variety of use cases. 2. Notational Conventions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 3. Link Relations The following link relations are defined. 3.1. The "create-form" Link Relation Type When included in a response, the "create-form" link relation indicates a target resource that represents a form that can be used to append a new member to the link context. <html> <ul> <li>Entry Description 1</li> <li>Entry Description 2</li> </ul> <a href="..." rel="create-form">[Add New Entry]</a> </html> or, expressed as a Link header Link: <...>; rel="create-form"; title="Add New Entry" 3.1.1. Using the "create-form" Link Relation If the form representation includes a submission URI, this URI MUST be used to submit the form. The context URI SHOULD be used otherwise. If the form representation includes a submission method, this method MUST be used for submit requests. HTTP's POST method SHOULD be used otherwise. 3.2. The "edit-form" Link Relation Type When included in a response, the "edit-form" link relation indicates a target resource that represents a form that can be used for updating the context resource. <html> ... <ul> <li> Entry Description 1 <a href="..." rel="edit-form">[Edit Entry]</a> </li> </ul> ... </html> or, expressed as a Link header Link: <...>; rel="edit-form"; title="Edit Entry" 3.2.1. Using the "edit-form" Link Relation If the form representation includes a submission URI, this URI MUST be used to submit the form. The context URI SHOULD be used otherwise. If the form representation includes a submission method, this method MUST be used for submit requests. HTTP's PUT method SHOULD be used otherwise. 3.3. Error-Handling Example When submitting forms in unsupported media type format, service may respond to the client with HTTP's 415 Unsupported Media Type status code. HTTP/1.1 415 Unsupported Media Type Link: <...>; rel="create-form"; title="Create new entry" Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: ... <html> Use <a href="..." rel="create-form"> this form </a> to create a new entry. </html> 4. IANA Considerations IANA has registered the "create-form" and "edit-form" link relations below as per [RFC5988]. 4.1. The Link Relation Registration "create-form" Relation Name: create-form Description: The target IRI points to a resource where a submission form can be obtained. Security considerations: Automated agents should take care when this relation crosses administrative domains (e.g., the URI has a different authority than the current document). Reference: See Section 3. 4.2. The Link Relation Registration "edit-form" Relation Name: edit-form Description: The target IRI points to a resource where a submission form for editing the associated resource can be obtained. Security Considerations: Automated agents should take care when this relation crosses administrative domains (e.g., the URI has a different authority than the current document). Reference: See Section 3. 5. Security Considerations See Section 7 of RFC 5988 [RFC5988]. 6. Internationalisation Considerations See Section 8 of RFC 5988 [RFC5988]. 7. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC5988] Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 5988, October 2010. Appendix A. Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Jan Algermissen. Author's Address Ioseb Dzmanashvili EMail: ioseb.dzmanashvili@gmail.com