A Media Type for XML Patch Operations
RFC 7351
| Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(August 2014; No errata)
Was draft-wilde-xml-patch (individual)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2014-08-13 | ||
| Stream | ISE | ||
| Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
| IETF conflict review | conflict-review-wilde-xml-patch | ||
| Stream | ISE state | Published RFC | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Document shepherd | Adrian Farrel | ||
| Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2014-06-12) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 7351 (Informational) | |
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
| IANA | IANA review state | IANA OK - Actions Needed | |
| IANA action state | RFC-Ed-Ack | ||
Independent Submission E. Wilde
Request for Comments: 7351 UC Berkeley
Category: Informational August 2014
ISSN: 2070-1721
A Media Type for XML Patch Operations
Abstract
The XML patch document format defines an XML document structure for
expressing a sequence of patch operations to be applied to an XML
document. The XML patch document format builds on the foundations
defined in RFC 5261. This specification also provides the media type
registration "application/xml-patch+xml", to allow the use of XML
patch documents in, for example, HTTP conversations.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other
RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at
its discretion and makes no statement about its value for
implementation or deployment. Documents approved for publication by
the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7351.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.
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RFC 7351 XML Patch August 2014
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Patch Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Patch Document Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Patch Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix A. Implementation Hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
A.1. Matching Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
A.2. Patching Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Appendix B. ABNF for RFC 5261 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) [RFC7303] is a common format for
the exchange and storage of structured data. HTTP PATCH [RFC5789]
extends HTTP [RFC7231] with a method to perform partial modifications
to resources. HTTP PATCH requires that patch documents be sent along
with the request, and it is therefore useful for there to be
standardized patch document formats (identified by media types) for
popular media types.
The XML patch media type "application/xml-patch+xml" is an XML
document structure for expressing a sequence of operations to apply
to a target XML document, suitable for use with the HTTP PATCH
method. Servers can freely choose which patch formats they want to
accept, and "application/xml-patch+xml" could be a simple default
format that can be used unless a server decides to use a different
(maybe more sophisticated) patch format for XML.
The format for patch documents is based on the XML patch framework
defined in RFC 5261 [RFC5261]. While RFC 5261 does define a concrete
syntax as well as the media type "application/patch-ops-error+xml"
for error documents, it only defines XML Schema (XSD)
[W3C.REC-xmlschema-1-20041028] types for patch operations. The
concrete document format and the media type for patch operations are
defined in an XSD defined in this specification.
This specification relies on RFC 5261 but also requires that errata
reported to date are taken into account. The main reason for the
errata is the problematic ways in which RFC 5261 relies on XML Path
Language (XPath) as the expression language for selecting the
location of a patch, while at the same time XPath's data model does
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RFC 7351 XML Patch August 2014
not contain sufficient information to determine whether such a
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