Open Stack

>> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Thorsten von Eicken <tve at rightscale.com> wrote:
>>>> Really? The way I understand it, when I retrieve resource X I will get a
>>>> bookmark link for X. But when I retrieve resource Y that happens to have a
>>>> reference to X this references will not include the bookmark link for X, it
>>>> will just include X's URL. I'd then have to retrieve that URL, which would
>>>> get me that resource's bookmark link and then realize that this is actually
>>>> X which I already have. Or perhaps I'm not understanding the docs correctly?


You are understanding things correctly and it does seem a bit overly complex. Worst yet it has implications when you have version changes. Say you retrieve Y but don't follow the reference to X right away -- say  you store the reference for later.  The reference has a URI with a version number in it -- it's possible that the version is changed by the time you want to retrieve it -- which means you lose access to the resource.   We try to fix the problem in the latest spec  essentially we supply a self and a bookmark link when you retrieve a resource.  Bookmark links you can use for long term storage -- self links you can follow right away -- we also supply the resource ID.

See the get server details example:

http://docs.openstack.org/cactus/openstack-compute/developer/openstack-compute-api-1.1/content/Get_Server_Details-d1e2623.html

This has implications in how you create new resources.  See Links and References:

http://docs.openstack.org/cactus/openstack-compute/developer/openstack-compute-api-1.1/content/LinksReferences.html

Thoughts?

-jOrGe W.