Use of the Slug header in the LWS protocol text

[laurensdeb]

The Slug HTTP header is defined in RFC 5023. It is mentioned several times in the specification text of the Protocol ED, but without reference to this RFC.

We should at least reconsider the wording of the protocol and reference the proper RFC as its source, or if the mechanics of the Slug header differ for LWS specify a different Header.

Source: https://github.com/w3c/lws-protocol/pull/81/changes#r2841544722

[acoburn]

The definition of the Slug header in RFC 5023 is such that its use by clients and support by servers is optional:

Slug is an HTTP entity-header whose presence in a POST to a
Collection constitutes a request by the client to use the header's
value as part of any URIs that would normally be used to retrieve the
to-be-created Entry or Media Resources.

Servers MAY use the value of the Slug header when creating the Member
URI of the newly created Resource, for instance, by using some or all
of the words in the value for the last URI segment. Servers MAY also
use the value when creating the atom:id, or as the title of a Media
Link Entry (see Section 9.6).

Servers MAY choose to ignore the Slug entity-header. Servers MAY
alter the header value before using it. For instance, a server might
filter out some characters or replace accented letters with non-
accented ones, replace spaces with underscores, change case, and so
on.

If LWS does not change the semantics of Slug, we may want to evaluate the extent to which it is even mentioned in the LWS specification. IOW, how does mentioning Slug differ from not mentioning Slug? Or said differently, could this be part of a "Best Practices" or "Implementation Guide"?

[acoburn]

Even as an optional (MAY) feature, the test suite will need to check for this as long as it is mentioned in the LWS spec.

It would also be important to consider the use of Slug in the context of offline-first scenarios