VirtuosoContentNegotiation Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP server Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP server Purpose The Transparent Content Negotiation (called TCN) is used is mehanism to provide best acceptable content by TCN cabaple user agents (UA). Consider a Web resource 'page' which has three variants: page.xml, page.html and page.txt all representing same data. The TCN capable UA can ask for 'page' content represented and indicate that XML format is preferred, then HTTP server then will transparently return page.xml. Most often UA understand different formats, e.g., XML, HTML, text etc., so in this case UA indicate order by specifying quality values for each type it understand. The server when receive request with multiple types acceptable will calculate quality for each variant and provide the best. In addition to returning content directly UA may ask server to provide a list of variants, then TCN capable client can choose the best for it. In the above we give examples with MIME type of content, but this also apply to content language and content encoding negotiation. The Virtuoso HTTP server TCN is based on experimental RFC2295, without "Feature" negotiation. Table The TCN variants are kept in a following SQL table:create table DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_MAP ( VM_ID integer identity, -- unique ID VM_RULELIST varchar, -- HTTP rule list name VM_URI varchar, -- The name of requested resource e.g. 'page' VM_VARIANT_URI varchar, -- The name of variant e.g. 'page.xml', 'page.de.html' etc. VM_QS float, -- Source quality, a float number 3 digit precision in 0.001-1.000 range VM_TYPE varchar, -- Content type of the variant e.g. text/xml VM_LANG varchar, -- Content language e.g. 'en', 'bg'. 'de' etc. VM_ENC varchar, -- Content encoding e.g. 'utf-8', 'ISO-8892' etc. VM_DESCRIPTION long varchar, -- a human readable description about variant e.g. 'Profile in RDF format' VM_ALGO int default 0, -- for future use primary key (VM_RULELIST, VM_URI, VM_VARIANT_URI)) create unique index HTTP_VARIANT_MAP_ID on DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_MAP (VM_ID) Algorithm The algorithm works as follows: If a virtual directory (VD) has 'url_rewrite' option set then the Web server (WS) will look in DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_MAP for VM_RULELIST matching the one specified in 'url_rewrite' option if present will loop over all variants for which VM_URI is equal to resource requested for every variant it will calculate source quality based on VM_QS and source quality given by the UA if best variant is found, it will add TCN HTTP headers and will pass the VM_VARIANT_URI to URL rewriter next if UA asks for variant list, it will compose such and will return Alternates HTTP header with 300 response if no URL rewrite rules exists, the WS will return content of expanded VM_VARIANT_URI Note: when UA asks for list then server return TCN header "list", when UA want negotiation then WS returns TCN header "choice", i.e., server may return list of variants or it may return best choice. API Adding or updating a variant DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_ADD ( in rulelist_uri varchar, -- HTTP rule list name in uri varchar, -- The name of requested resource e.g. 'page' in variant_uri varchar, -- The name of variant e.g. 'page.xml', 'page.de.html' etc. in mime varchar, -- Content type of the variant e.g. text/xml in qs float := 1.0, -- Source quality, a float number 3 digit precision in 0.001-1.000 range in descrition varchar := null, -- a human readable description about variant e.g. 'Profile in RDF format' in lang varchar := null, -- Content language e.g. 'en', 'bg'. 'de' etc. in enc varchar := null -- Content encoding e.g. 'utf-8', 'ISO-8892' etc. ) variant removal DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_REMOVE ( in rulelist_uri varchar, -- HTTP rule list name in uri varchar, -- The name of requested resource e.g. 'page' in variant_uri varchar := '%' -- Variant name filter ) Examples Prividing different content types In this example we assume following files are uploaded in WedDAV server : /DAV/page.xml - XML variant /DAV/page.html - HTML variant /DAV/page.txt - text variant The above files are considered as containing same information by in different formats. We add TCN rules & add a virtual directory: DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_ADD ('http_rule_list_1', 'page', 'page.html', 'text/html', 0.900000, 'HTML variant'); DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_ADD ('http_rule_list_1', 'page', 'page.txt', 'text/plain', 0.500000, 'Text document'); DB.DBA.HTTP_VARIANT_ADD ('http_rule_list_1', 'page', 'page.xml', 'text/xml', 1.000000, 'XML variant'); DB.DBA.VHOST_DEFINE (lpath=>'/DAV', ppath=>'/DAV/', is_dav=>1, vsp_user=>'dba', opts=>vector ('url_rewrite', 'http_rule_list_1')); Now we can test the setup with an http client e.g. 'curl' program: Here UA tell server it better understand HTML and let server to perform TCN $ curl -i -H "Accept: text/xml;q=0.3,text/html;q=1.0,text/plain;q=0.5,*/*;q=0.3" -H "Negotiate: *" http://localhost:8890/DAV/page HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Virtuoso/05.00.3021 (Linux) i686-pc-linux-gnu VDB Connection: Keep-Alive Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:43:18 GMT Accept-Ranges: bytes TCN: choice Vary: negotiate,accept Content-Location: page.html Content-Type: text/html ETag: "14056a25c066a6e0a6e65889754a0602" Content-Length: 49 <html> <body> some html </body> </html> In this case we change source quality values so UA tells it better understand XML $ curl -i -H "Accept: text/xml,text/html;q=0.7,text/plain;q=0.5,*/*;q=0.3" -H "Negotiate: *" http://localhost:8890/DAV/page HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Virtuoso/05.00.3021 (Linux) i686-pc-linux-gnu VDB Connection: Keep-Alive Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:44:07 GMT Accept-Ranges: bytes TCN: choice Vary: negotiate,accept Content-Location: page.xml Content-Type: text/xml ETag: "8b09f4b8e358fcb7fd1f0f8fa918973a" Content-Length: 39 <?xml version="1.0" ?> <a>some xml</a> And finally UA want to decide itslef, so he asks for list of variants, server will provide it and in addition will send an HTML body just in case so end user can decide himself if UA can't. $ curl -i -H "Accept: text/xml,text/html;q=0.7,text/plain;q=0.5,*/*;q=0.3" -H "Negotiate: vlist" http://localhost:8890/DAV/page HTTP/1.1 300 Multiple Choices Server: Virtuoso/05.00.3021 (Linux) i686-pc-linux-gnu VDB Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:44:35 GMT Accept-Ranges: bytes TCN: list Vary: negotiate,accept Alternates: {"page.html" 0.900000 {type text/html}}, {"page.txt" 0.500000 {type text/plain}}, {"page.xml" 1.000000 {type text/xml}} Content-Length: 368 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>300 Multiple Choices</title> </head><body> <h1>Multiple Choices</h1> Available variants:<ul> <li><a href="page.html">HTML variant</a>, type text/html</li> <li><a href="page.txt">Text document</a>, type text/plain</li> <li><a href="page.xml">XML variant</a>, type text/xml</li> </ul> </body></html> CategoryVirtuoso CategorySpec