[tahoe-dev] wanted in webapi: a way to download a file only if it is a file

[zooko]

Following-up to my own post:

On Aug 9, 2007, at 3:55 PM, zooko wrote:

> Suppose you are asked to download something, and if it is a file you
> are supposed to just download it, but if it is a directory you are
> supposed to recursively download its contents.
...
> This calls out for a flag, such as "GET URL?t=file", which would
> cause the server to return an error if the thing at URL is not a file.

Actually I guess it *is* possible to do the right thing without this  
flag -- you just fetch the metadata of the *parent* directory of the  
target then use the type and uri from that metadata.

Still, this is non-obvious and I think the webapi would be improved  
by providing a way to express "Just get me the file." without saying  
"Get me the file or else some human-readable web page if it turns out  
it isn't a file.".

Regards,

Zooko