On Tuesday 23 October 2007, Klaas Freitag wrote:

Please let me know what you think, read here: http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service/Concepts/Notification

Some comments: HTTP API: - Storing a message requires a username as parameter which is somehow mixed with the recipients which are part of the message itself. This could cause inconsistencies. So wouldn't it be better to just use the recipients from the message? - Why is the message type part of the URL? An alternative could be to place it as tag into the message. This would also allow to have multiple types or subtypes for a message. - Maybe it would be useful to provide an interface for posting raw messages, without the need to format them as XML. This could be done by using URL parameters to define the meta message and use the body of the post as message body. This way you could send messages simply by using for example curl from the command line. - Would it be useful to put the sender in the URL you use to post messages to? It would make it easier to set up access rights, because you could use standard HTTP authentication for "subdirectories" without needing to look into the message at all. Message format: - The message should have a unique id. - The recipient fields use a simple user name as id. Wouldn't it be better to use something unambiguous like an email address. Otherwise it will be hard to mix messages which use different user names (e.g. external Novell Login and internal Innerweb login). - Maybe it would be nice to have a way to include links in a message. Either inline in the body or as a special element. So you could for example reference the origin of the message. Or you could reference other messages, for example to create threads. - The content of the body isn't very well defined. Is it allowed to include HTML tags there? Is it possible to add binary attachments like a picture. Is it possible to embed other XML formats in a seperate namespace? Maybe it would help to define a MIME type or something like that for the body. - Maybe it would be nice to have an attribute which indicates the language of the message. - There is a subject element missing. - Is it possible to have more than one body? (e.g. a text and a HTML version) - Somehow this leads to the question, if it wouldn't be better to use an existing message format like the email specification or Jabber messages instead of creating an own one. It might look simpler to roll an own one at first sight, but a lot of problems will occur later, which are solved by existing formats. If there are libraries and tools available to conveniently handle an existing format, it might be easier to implement, even if the format is more complex. It would also always be possible to use a subset of an existing format. That could still be better than using a completely home-grown one. Architecture: - It might be nice to have another set of agents on the receiving side, so that it's possible to directly feed email or similar stuff into the system without having to know about the REST interface or the XML formats. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+help@opensuse.org