On Sep 28, 2005, at 3:49 PM, Andy Gayton wrote:
There's getMetadata. That let's you return arbitrary attributes. Would that cover what you're thinking?
James Y Knight wrote:
No -- one problem is that extended metadata can be potentially very large (just as large as the file's normal contents). Another is that there may be potentially a large number of such attributes.
I think it may be best to model it as a special kind of child, as it seems as if that's the way people are moving their thinking anyhow. IFileSystemNode.xattrContainer() -> IFileSystemContainer
That returned object would then allow the use of the same createFile/ child/remove/rename/open/read operations as on normal children. It would have to throw errors if you try doing excessively "interesting" things, like trying to create directories in it, but I think that's probably okay.
How about getMetadata for simple data (size, content-type) and a container as you describe for potentially huge its of data? hrm, .getattrs, .setattrs, .xattrsContainer ? There definately should be a way to query what metadata a backend can provide, and to pass which particular data you are requesting for performance. Namespaces might be useful to? It'd be good to see a use case to show that they are. I'm keen to just let WebDAV's requirements drive the design here. None of our uses up till now have had a great demand on metadata. Andy.