Well-Known URIs for Service Description
draft-polli-service-description-well-known-uri-latest

Abstract

Link Relation Types for Web Services have been introduced in RFC 8631 to provide documentation, descriptions, metadata, or status information for these resources. This specification registers the corrisponding labels into the well-known URI IANA Registry.

Note to Readers

RFC EDITOR: please remove this section before publication

Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTP working group mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org), which is archived at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/.

The source code and issues list for this draft can be found at https://github.com/ioggstream/draft-polli-service-description-well-known-uri.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on April 25, 2020.

Copyright Notice

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 1.1. Notational Conventions
• 2. Well-Known URI for Web Services
• 3. Examples
• 3.1. Communicate API specification via well-known URI
• 3.2. Communicate API documentation via well-known URI
• 3.3. Communicate API status via well-known URI
• 4. Security Considerations
• 4.1. Information exposure
• 5. IANA Considerations
• 5.1. service-doc Well-Known URI Registration
• 5.2. service-desc Well-Known URI Registration
• 5.3. service-meta Well-Known URI Registration
• 5.4. status Well-Known URI Registration
• 6. References
• 6.1. Normative References
• 6.2. Informative References
• Appendix A. Acknowledgements
• Change Log
• FAQ
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

[RFC8631] introduced the ability to provide documentation, descriptions, metadata, or status information for Web Services via Link Relations.

Making service metadata directly available under the “.well-known/” path (see Section 1.1 of [RFC5785]) enables retrieving those informations without the need to process Link relations or send the following headers in every response.

Link: <https://api.example.net/.well-known/service-desc>; rel="service-desc"
Link: <https://api.example.net/.well-known/status>; rel="status"; type="application/problem+json"

For example a client could evaluate authentication or authorization policies defined in “service-desc” before trying to access the service.

Another example is getting the service “status” without looking for informations into Link relation response headers.

This specification adds the corrisponding entries in the well-known URI IANA Registry.

1.1. Notational Conventions

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “NOT RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 ([RFC2119] and [RFC8174]) when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

The terms “documentation” and “description” are to be interpreted as described in Section 3 of [RFC8631].

2. Well-Known URI for Web Services

This specifications registers the following Well-Known URIs associated to the Link Relations defined in [RFC8631].

Servers MAY use content negotiation (see Section 3.4 of [RFC7231]) to provide different types of documentation or description.

Clients SHOULD NOT make any assumptions about the provided type of documentation or description.

3. Examples

3.1. Communicate API specification via well-known URI

Request:

  GET /.well-know/service-desc
  Accept: application/vnd.oai.openapi;version=3.0.1

Response:

  HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
  Content-Type: application/vnd.oai.openapi;version=3.0.1

  ...openapi specification...

3.2. Communicate API documentation via well-known URI

Request:

  GET /.well-know/service-doc
  Accept: text/html, application/pdf

Response:

  HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
  Content-Type: text/html

  ...html documentation...

3.3. Communicate API status via well-known URI

Request:

  GET /.well-know/status

Response:

  HTTP/1.1 503 Ok
  Content-Type: application/problem+json
  Retry-After: 3600
  
  {
    "status": 503,
    "title": "Service Unavailable",
    "detail": "Service is under maintenance. Check the Retry-After header."
  }
  

4. Security Considerations

4.1. Information exposure

TODO

5. IANA Considerations

This specification defines a “well-known” URI using the registration procedure and template from Section 5.1 of [RFC8615].

5.1. service-doc Well-Known URI Registration

IANA has added the following to the “Well-Known URIs” [RFC8615] registry:

URI suffix: service-doc

Change controller: IETF.

Specification document(s): Section 6.1 of [RFC8631], this document

Related information: None.

5.2. service-desc Well-Known URI Registration

IANA has added the following to the “Well-Known URIs” [RFC8615] registry:

URI suffix: service-desc

Change controller: IETF.

Specification document(s): Section 6.2 of [RFC8631], this document

Related information: None.

5.3. service-meta Well-Known URI Registration

IANA has added the following to the “Well-Known URIs” [RFC8615] registry:

URI suffix: service-meta

Change controller: IETF.

Specification document(s): Section 6.3 [RFC8631], this document

Related information: None.

5.4. status Well-Known URI Registration

IANA has added the following to the “Well-Known URIs” [RFC8615] registry:

URI suffix: status

Change controller: IETF.

Specification document(s): Section 6.4 [RFC8631], this document

Related information: None.

6. References

6.1. Normative References

6.2. Informative References

Appendix A. Acknowledgements

This work is based on Erik Wilde’s work on service description contained in [RFC8631].

Change Log

RFC EDITOR PLEASE DELETE THIS SECTION.

FAQ

RFC EDITOR PLEASE DELETE THIS SECTION.

Author's Address