One document matched: draft-sakimura-json-meta-00.txt


 



INTERNET-DRAFT                                              Nat Sakimura
Intended Status: Informational                 Nomura Research Institute
Expires: June 4, 2013                                   December 1, 2012


                           JSON Meta Object 
                      draft-sakimura-json-meta-00


Abstract

   Although JSON has become a popular choice of the web services
   response that tries to be REST like, the lack of its capability to
   express the hyperlink and other metadata in a standardized manner has
   been felt. This document proposes a method to minimally represent
   such metadata that can be inserted into the existing JSON responses
   to express such metadata. 


Status of this Memo

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

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
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   Internet-Drafts.

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Copyright and License Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 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
 


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   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document. Please review these documents
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.



Table of Contents

   1  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2  Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   3  JSON Meta Object  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     3.1 _links Property  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       3.1.1 href . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       3.1.2 method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       3.1.3 Authorize  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       3.1.4 params . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       3.1.5 content-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     4.1 href tampering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   5  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   6  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     6.1  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     6.2  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6




















 


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1  Introduction

   JSON has become one of the most popular format of the choice of the
   "REST like" web services. However, the lack of the standardized way
   of expressing hyperlinks and other metadata about the response has
   remained a issue for a long time. 

   There has been several efforts to bring such hyperlink capability to
   JSON. To name a few, there has been such efforts like: 

   * JSON Hyper Schema as a part of JSON Schema.  
     (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-zyp-json-schema-03#section-6)
   * JSON Hypermedia API Language  (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-
     kelly-json-hal-03)
   * Home Documents for HTTP APIs  (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-
     nottingham-json-home-02)

   Of those, JSON Hyper Schema seems to most closely match the needs for
   "insertable JSON Stub" into currently existing JSON responses.
   However, at the same time, the later two shares a very similar design
   principle of expressing link relations (commonly referred to as
   "rel") as the keys in JSON rather than values like in the case of
   JSON Hyper Schema. It has a distinctive advantage of being able to
   use the indexing capability of JSON instead of going through the loop
   to find the right relationship. 

   Another disadvantage of JSON Hyper Schema is the document structure.
   In particular, the fact that  it is embedded inside a much larger
   JSON Schema specification means that it comes with a lot of baggage
   that many developers would not need for the purpose of just adding
   metadata to existing JSON responses. 

   Under this kind of situation, this document attempts to produce a
   minimum set of JSON stub to achieve a metadata that can express the
   hyperlinks and other relations. 

2  Requirements

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].







 


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3  JSON Meta Object

   A JSON Meta Object uses the format described in [RFC4627] and is
   intended to be inserted into a JSON document to express some of the
   metadata associated with it as "_links" property.  

   The value of the "_links" property is a JSON object that expresses
   link relationships (rel), which in turn holds an array of object with
   "href" and other properties. 

   Following non-normative schematic example should help envisage what
   it would look like the following. (Note: line-wraps are for display
   purpose only.)  

      {
        "_links":{
          "self":[
            {"href":"https://example.com/token?code=123"}
          ],
          "http://openid.net/specs/
           openid-connect-messages-1_0.html#userinfo_ep":[
            {
              "href":"https://example.com/user/{user_id}",
              "method":"GET",
              "Authorize":"{token_type} {access_token}"
            },
            {
              "href":"https://example.com/user/{user_id}",
              "method":"POST",
              "Authorize":"{token_type} {access_token}",
              "params":[
                "name","birthday"
              ]
            }
        },
        "token_type":"Bearer",
        "access_token":"aCessToKen"
      }

   Here, we have "_links" property that expresses various "relations"
   such as "self" and "http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-messages-
   1_0.html#userinfo_ep". Each relationships has an array as its value,
   and the array holds multiple objects that holds various properties
   such as "href". They are explained in the next section. 

3.1 _links Property

   _links property holds exactly one object the holds the following
 


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   properties with relation as the key. The key SHOULD be link relation
   types that are defined in the IANA registry defined in [RFC5988] or a
   URL that describes the relation. 

   Each relation property holds exactly one array, whose items are
   objects. Each object has following properties, which are all
   optional.

3.1.1 href

   URI Template [RFC6570] that the relation points to. The values for
   template parameters SHOULD be taken from the matching top-level
   properties in the including JSON object.   

3.1.2 method

   The HTTP method defined in [RFC2616] that can be used to the URL
   described in the href. e.g., GET, POST, PUT, DELETE. 

3.1.3 Authorize

   The HTTP Authorize header defined in [RFC2616] to be used when
   accessing the resource identified by href. It is templated in a
   similar manner as in URI template. This will be explained further
   later.

3.1.4 params

   The parameters to be sent to the URL expressed in "href". The value
   is an array of strings that corresponds to the parameter names of the
   parameters that are to be sent to the URL. 

3.1.5 content-type

   The content-type to be used when the parameters are sent to the URL. 

   e.g., "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", "multipart/form-data",
   "application/json".


4  Security Considerations

4.1 href tampering

   Unless integrity protected channel is used, an attacker may be able
   to tamper the value of the href thereby causing the receiver of the
   JSON response to send a request to the URL under the attacker's
   control with potentially confidential information contained in the
 


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   parameters.

   To mitigate this risk, an integrity protected channel such as TLS
   protected channel should be used. 


5  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no request to IANA. 


6  References

6.1  Normative References


   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [RFC4627]  Crockford, D., "The application/json Media Type for
              JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)", RFC 4627, July 2006.

   [RFC5988]  Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 5988, October 2010.


6.2  Informative References

   [RFC5513]  Farrel, A., "IANA Considerations for Three Letter
              Acronyms", RFC 5513, April 1 2009.


   [OIDC1.0]  Sakimura, N., Bradley, J., Jones, M., de Madeiros, B.,
              Mortimore, C., Jay, E., "OpenID Connect Messages 1.0"


Authors' Addresses


   Nat Sakimura
   Nomura Research Institute 

   EMail: n-sakimura@nri.co.jp





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