LYNX-DEV POSTing, PUTting, uploading...

[Klaus Weide]

On Tue, 26 Nov 1996, Tom Zerucha wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Nov 1996, Klaus Weide wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 24 Nov 1996, guest login (presumably aka address@hidden) wrote:
> > 
> > > Question, how come one cannot upload using the Lynx browser in a FTP site?
> > 
> > I guess because nobody has written the code for it...
> 
> Nor any URL specification, at least to my knowledge.
> 
> > And then, how would one specify source file and destination?  It doesn't
> > seem to fit in the general Lynx user interface too well.
> 
> Destination would be in the url, e.g.
> ftpupload://host.name/pub/incoming/test.tar.gz
> and lynx would prompt your for a file spec as it does for download.

See, I was thinking the other way around... i.e. that the user would 
select a local file: link and then be prompted for the destination.

Anyway, I think a new URL spec would not be needed.   An URL is supposed
to specify a "resource", but not the action to do on that - for example
GET, HEAD, and POST can all be done on the same http: URL, there is no
need for httphead: and httppost: schemes.  One action (GET) is the 
default action, but http: doesn't imply that it is the only one.
So an ftp: URL should work just fine for other actions that GETting,
the context where it is used (or the user) would have to specify what
to DO with it.

For what you seemed to have in mind - more a server/pageauthor driven
file upload, rather than user-driven traditional ftp client funtionality -
there already is the "Form-based File Upload" RFC 1867.  That doesn't
work for "posting" files to an FTP location, but maybe there isn't
really much of a need for it.
 
> > Having the HTTP 'PUT' method supported for uploads would also be nice.
> > But then, many things would be nice to have...
> 
> Actually POST works, more or less.  I have a CLI microbrowser/microserver
> pair that I use POST to upload files, but I don't translate characters.
> Lynx has a way of posting formdata from a file, at least from the command
> line.

From the point of view of the HTTP protocol, there isn't that much
difference between the POST and PUT methods.  What goes over the wire
(from the client to the server) is in both cases a HTTP message with
the same components (request line, headers, body).

  Klaus

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