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RemoveMustOrderCollectionsByUpdated


Abstract

Allow flexbility in how the protocol evolves by removing the requirement that collections must be sorted by their entries' atom:updated value.

Status

Open

Rationale

The specification to sort all collections by updated is overconstrained

  1. we don't know enough about what will people need to enforce a single sort order on collections

  2. sort by updated might make future sync'ing efforts difficult to achieve

Proposal

In section 9 Listing Collections, remove

The entries in the returned Atom Feed MUST be ordered by 
their "atom:updated" property, with the most recently updated 
entries coming first in the document order. Clients SHOULD be 
constructed in consideration of the fact that changes which 
do not alter the entry's atom:updated value will not affect 
the position of the entry in a collection

Impacts

Server: deployed implementations can continue to serve collections sorted by updated

Clients: cannot assume that the entries are sorted by their atom:updated values

Notes

Future extensions could provide an app:sort containing the Clarkname of the element entries are sorted by. Providing a means for a client to specify the sort order of a collection by using an entry tuple or URI templates is another possible extension (this would be a primitive query langauge).


CategoryProposals