Web Things, by Mark Baker

On the brand-spankin-new REST IRC channel (does anybody have the ability to set up a chump and/or log bot?), Joe Gregorio asks;

[18-Feb:17:02 jcgregorio] ok, quick question about DELETE, does success mean the URI *has* to then go 404 or 410?
[18-Feb:17:02 jcgregorio] here is the context
[18-Feb:17:02 jcgregorio] I am adding support for the AtomAPI to a wiki
[18-Feb:17:02 jcgregorio] one of the actions is to DELETE a definition
[18-Feb:17:03 jcgregorio] but as far as a wiki is concerned, *all* words exist, they just don't have definitions yet
[18-Feb:17:04 jcgregorio] for example: http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/ALongWikiWordWhichHasNeverBeenEdited
[18-Feb:17:05 jcgregorio] my implementation now gives a 200 on DELETE, which removes the definition, but doin a GET on the DELETED URI returns a valid Atom Entry with empyt content

Great question. I’d say that it’s up to the server to interpret what DELETE means (within the bounds of the RFC 2616 definition, of course). The behaviour you describe for the Wiki there is reasonable, I’d say.