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- From: Seairth Jacobs <seairth@bbglobex.com>
- To: xml-dev <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
- Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 10:07:57 -0500
Mike Brown wrote:
> Seairth Jacobs wrote:
> > When processing an XML ducument, how do you all suggest
> > returning an appropriate error when the document is either
> > not well-formed or is not valid (against a DTD or schema)?
>
> I think you answered your own question in the rest of your message; you
want
> to avoid using transport-specific error messages for well-formedness or
> validity errors. If there was no problem with the transmission/transport
of
> the data, regardless of how parseable it is, then an HTTP 4xx error
response
> is not appropriate.
>
> However it is not out of the question to use the body of an HTTP response
to
> provide an acknowledgement and success/failure info, in any format.. just
> don't pick the response code based on that. If the transmission was
> successful, return a 200, 201 or 204, according to the guidelines in
section
> 9.5 of the HTTP/1.1 spec. In fact, 10.2.1 says that for a POST (I do hope
> you are using POST), a 200 indicates that the request succeeded and it
> should provide an entity (body) describing or containing the result of the
> action. So there you go. Success of the request is not the same as the
> result of the action.
Sure, that was my feeling as well. However, is there a "standard" way of
returning a response that indicates that the XML document failed either
well-formedness or validity tests? For instance, if the document is not
valid, it would not necessarily be appropriate to return a error response
according to the document schema.
Ex. 1: sending a request that is not valid (though is based on the correct
document schema)
<!-- request -->
<mystandard><body>Some data</body></mystandard>
<!-- response -->
<mystandard errno="-1"><error>No body tag in schema</error></mystandard>
Ex. 2: sending a request that is not valid and isn't even based on the
correct schema
<!-- request -->
<wrongstandard><body>Some data</body></wrongstandard>
What would be an appropriate response here? You can't necessarily return a
response as was done in Ex.1 because the requester may not understand the
schema being used. What would be a more universal way to indicate such a
failure? (This sounds like the need for a standard.)
The same argument can be applied to an XML document that's not well-formed.
However, here one can't even necessarily return an error response based on a
schema because the request may not have been validated yet. It's almost as
if there needs to be a universal error response that everyone recognizes in
addition to their own schema specific responses. For instance, the
following could be a response recognized by all systems:
<xmlerror type="VC" production="39"/>
or
<xmlerror>
<production number="32" type="VC"/>
<production number="39" type="WFC"/>
</xmlerror>
Before anyone complains, I realize that "xml" are reserved here. I was only
using it for clarity (though it would be nice for the W3C to adopt something
like this, if they haven't already). I realize that this does not encompass
validation of the XML Schema standard or other standards concerning
definition of validity. However, it may be possible to work one out so that
the above sample might look like:
<xmlerror source="XML">
<!-- based on the XML specification productions -->
<constraint number="32" type="VC"/>
<constraint number="39" type="WFC"/>
</xmlerror>
<xmlerror source="XML Schema">
<!-- indexed list of XML Schema validation contraints would be needed
(if they don't aklready exist)-->
<constraint number="25" type="VC"/>
<constraint number="104" type="VC"/>
</xmlerror>
<xmlerror source="Schematron">
<!-- indexed list of Schematron validation contraints would be needed
(if they don't aklready exist)-->
<constraint number="32" type="VC"/>
</xmlerror>
And, of course, if the processing got beyond all validity and
well-formedness tests successfully, then the receiver could still return an
"error" based on the schema in use and be guaranteed to know that the sender
"should" understand the response.
Thoughts, anyone?
---
Seairth Jacobs
seairth@bbglobex.com
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