LID 2.0 POST Sender Service

From LID Wiki

Contents 1 Overview 2 Parameters 2.1 lid-action=enter-post 2.2 lid-content-type 2.3 lid-content 2.4 lid-target 3 Example usage 4 Keeping track of outgoing messages

Overview

Defines the sender role of a protocol by which a LID Object (identified by its own LID URL, and supporting the LID 2.0 POST Sender Service) may me prompted to send information (of any MIME type) to a LID Object which supports the LID 2.0 POST Receiver Service.

There is no requirement that a LID Object support the LID 2.0 POST Sender Service to send a message. This service type exists to indicate that a LID Object may be prompted to offer a form or similar user-interface element through which the user may assemble a message. LID Objects that do not prompt the user, but send messages without a user interface do not need to support this service type.

See also LID 2.0 POST Receiver Service.

Parameters

Any LID that supports the LID 2.0 POST Sender Service understands the following parameters:

lid-action=enter-post

When accessed with this a lid-action=enter-post, the LID is supposed to return appropriate content that allows a human user to enter the payload that the user wishes to send to some destination from this LID. Implementors are free to provide as basic or as comfortable an implementation as they wish. In the simplest case, the response consists of a simple HTML text form that allows the user to enter content of MIME type text/plain.

More complex implementations may allow the user to enter information of different MIME types, to upload files etc.

lid-content-type

The value domain of this parameter is the same as the value domain of parameter lid-format in the LID 2.0 Format Negotiation Service. If specified together with a lid-action=enter-post, it provides a hint to the LID which kind of content the user is supposed to enter.

A prospective receiver of a LID 2.0 POST could assemble a LID URL including this parameter, and redirect the user to the created URL in order to create a reasonable (from its perspective) default which kind of content should be POSTed to it.

lid-content

The value domain of this parameter is determined by the format specified in lid-content-type. This parameter must only be provided if lid-content-type is provided as well.

The content of this parameter provides a template for the user, from which they can assemble the message/post to send to the receiver.

lid-target

The URL to which the user may post the assembled message. This URL must support the LID 2.0 POST Receiver Service.

Example usage

For example, a group blog site may use LID for authentication of their users. Users can use any LID they wish that supports the LID 2.0 POST Sender Service, including LID URLs not affiliated with the site. When a user clicks on the "Post a message" button on the site, the site redirects the user to their own LID (which is known, as the group blog site is a LID Relying Party) with the arguments ?lid-action=enter-post&lid-content-type=text%47plain&lid-content=In%20response%3a%0a%0d.

The user's LID will respond by opening up a suitable text form, with the provided initial content ("In response:"), that the user can edit. When the user is done, submitting the form will assemble a LID request with the edited content according to LID 2.0 POST Receiver Service and submit it to the URL provided in the lid-target parameter.

Keeping track of outgoing messages

Note that because all messages/posts originate from the user's LID, the user can easily keep track of all messages that he sent. (This is unlike today's prevalent situation where it is very hard to keep track of all posts that the user has ever made to websites.)