Discussion Content-Type

[ThomasRanvikEriksen]

We want to discuss the use of content-type. The 2 categories we want now is Reading and IntervalReading

Something like this (We might want to skip the company part. Do we want version?)?

• application/vnd.{company}.{category}.{version}+{format}

Examples:

• application/vnd.lede.cim-reading.v17.0+json
• application/vnd.lede.cim-intervalreading.v17.0+json

Best Practice:

• Content-type: application/vnd.company.category+xml
• Content-type: application/vnd.company.category+html
• Content-type: application/vnd.company.category+json
• Content-type: application/vnd.company.category+jsonld

Internal discussion:

• Version is smart to add for change management
• Company might not be needed

[VladimirAlexiev]

Hi @ThomasRanvikEriksen !
The examples above mix two aspects:

• ContentType, which describes what data format (serialization) is used
• Profile, which describes what kind of data it is (the nature of the data)

It is best to keep them separate since there are standard mechanisms defined for:

• content negotiation, eg a human may want "give me text/html" and a machine may say "give me ld+json, otherwise text/turtle, otherwise application/rdf+xml"
• profile negotiation. This is only needed if the same data can be returned in several variations (eg lightweight vs heavyweight form).

Content negotiation is a fundamental part of the Web Architecture and has been used for over 20 years.
Profile negotiation is newer, see https://www.w3.org/TR/dx-prof/.

cc @Sveino