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The Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) :: RFC4825








Network Working Group                                       J. Rosenberg
Request for Comments: 4825                                         Cisco
Category: Standards Track                                       May 2007


                 The Extensible Markup Language (XML)
                  Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)

Status of This Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).

Abstract

   This specification defines the Extensible Markup Language (XML)
   Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP).  XCAP allows a client to read,
   write, and modify application configuration data stored in XML format
   on a server.  XCAP maps XML document sub-trees and element attributes
   to HTTP URIs, so that these components can be directly accessed by
   HTTP.























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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Overview of Operation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.  Definitions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   5.  Application Usages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.1.  Application Unique ID (AUID) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.2.  Default Document Namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     5.3.  Data Validation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     5.4.  Data Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     5.5.  Naming Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     5.6.  Resource Interdependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     5.7.  Authorization Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     5.8.  Data Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     5.9.  Documenting Application Usages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     5.10. Guidelines for Creating Application Usages . . . . . . . . 13
   6.  URI Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     6.1.  XCAP Root  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     6.2.  Document Selector  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     6.3.  Node Selector  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     6.4.  Namespace Bindings for the Selector  . . . . . . . . . . . 23
   7.  Client Operations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     7.1.  Create or Replace a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
     7.2.  Delete a Document  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
     7.3.  Fetch a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
     7.4.  Create or Replace an Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
     7.5.  Delete an Element  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
     7.6.  Fetch an Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
     7.7.  Create or Replace an Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
     7.8.  Delete an Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
     7.9.  Fetch an Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
     7.10. Fetch Namespace Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
     7.11. Conditional Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
   8.  Server Behavior  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
     8.1.  POST Handling  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
     8.2.  PUT Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
       8.2.1.  Locating the Parent  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
       8.2.2.  Verifying Document Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
       8.2.3.  Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
       8.2.4.  Replacement  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
       8.2.5.  Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
       8.2.6.  Conditional Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
       8.2.7.  Resource Interdependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
     8.3.  GET Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
     8.4.  DELETE Handling  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
     8.5.  Managing Etags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
   9.  Cache Control  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47



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   10. Namespace Binding Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
   11. Detailed Conflict Reports  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
     11.1. Document Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
     11.2. XML Schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
   12. XCAP Server Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
     12.1. Application Unique ID (AUID) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
     12.2. XML Schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
     12.3. Default Document Namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
     12.4. MIME Type  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
     12.5. Validation Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
     12.6. Data Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
     12.7. Naming Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
     12.8. Resource Interdependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
     12.9. Authorization Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
   13. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
   14. Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
   15. IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
     15.1. XCAP Application Unique IDs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
     15.2. MIME Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
       15.2.1. application/xcap-el+xml MIME Type  . . . . . . . . . . 61
       15.2.2. application/xcap-att+xml MIME Type . . . . . . . . . . 62
       15.2.3. application/xcap-ns+xml MIME Type  . . . . . . . . . . 63
       15.2.4. application/xcap-error+xml MIME Type . . . . . . . . . 64
       15.2.5. application/xcap-caps+xml MIME Type  . . . . . . . . . 64
     15.3. URN Sub-Namespace Registrations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
       15.3.1. urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-error  . . . . . . . . . . 65
       15.3.2. urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-caps . . . . . . . . . . . 66
     15.4. XML Schema Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
       15.4.1. XCAP Error Schema Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
       15.4.2. XCAP Capabilities Schema Registration  . . . . . . . . 67
   16. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
   17. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
     17.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
     17.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

















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1.  Introduction

   In many communications applications, such as Voice over IP, instant
   messaging, and presence, it is necessary for network servers to
   access per-user information in the process of servicing a request.
   This per-user information resides within the network, but is managed
   by the end user themselves.  Its management can be done through a
   multiplicity of access points, including the web, a wireless handset,
   or a PC application.

   There are many examples of per-user information.  One is presence
   [20] authorization policy, which defines rules about which watchers
   are allowed to subscribe to a presentity, and what information they
   are allowed to access.  Another is presence lists, which are lists of
   users whose presence is desired by a watcher [26].  One way to obtain
   presence information for the list is to subscribe to a resource which
   represents that list [21].  In this case, the Resource List Server
   (RLS) requires access to this list in order to process a SIP [16]
   SUBSCRIBE [28] request for it.  Another way to obtain presence for
   the users on the list is for a watcher to subscribe to each user
   individually.  In that case, it is convenient to have a server store
   the list, and when the client boots, it fetches the list from the
   server.  This would allow a user to access their resource lists from
   different clients.

   This specification describes a protocol that can be used to
   manipulate this per-user data.  It is called the Extensible Markup
   Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP).  XCAP is a set
   of conventions for mapping XML documents and document components into
   HTTP URIs, rules for how the modification of one resource affects
   another, data validation constraints, and authorization policies
   associated with access to those resources.  Because of this
   structure, normal HTTP primitives can be used to manipulate the data.
   XCAP is based heavily on ideas borrowed from the Application
   Configuration Access Protocol (ACAP) [25], but it is not an extension
   of it, nor does it have any dependencies on it.  Like ACAP, XCAP is
   meant to support the configuration needs for a multiplicity of
   applications, rather than just a single one.

   XCAP was not designed as a general purpose XML search protocol, XML
   database update protocol, nor a general purpose, XML-based
   configuration protocol for network elements.









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2.  Overview of Operation

   Each application (where an application refers to a use case that
   implies a collection of data and associated semantics) that makes use
   of XCAP specifies an application usage (Section 5).  This application
   usage defines the XML schema [2] for the data used by the
   application, along with other key pieces of information.  The
   principal task of XCAP is to allow clients to read, write, modify,
   create, and delete pieces of that data.  These operations are
   supported using HTTP/1.1 [6].  An XCAP server acts as a repository
   for collections of XML documents.  There will be documents stored for
   each application.  Within each application, there are documents
   stored for each user.  Each user can have a multiplicity of documents
   for a particular application.  To access some component of one of
   those documents, XCAP defines an algorithm for constructing a URI
   that can be used to reference that component.  Components refer to
   any element or attribute within the document.  Thus, the HTTP URIs
   used by XCAP point to a document, or to pieces of information that
   are finer grained than the XML document itself.  An HTTP resource
   that follows the naming conventions and validation constraints
   defined here is called an XCAP resource.

   Since XCAP resources are also HTTP resources, they can be accessed
   using HTTP methods.  Reading an XCAP resource is accomplished with
   HTTP GET, creating or modifying one is done with HTTP PUT, and
   removing one of the resources is done with an HTTP DELETE.  XCAP
   resources do not represent processing scripts; as a result, POST
   operations to HTTP URIs representing XCAP resources are not defined.
   Properties that HTTP associates with resources, such as entity tags,
   also apply to XCAP resources.  Indeed, entity tags are particularly
   useful in XCAP, as they allow a number of conditional operations to
   be performed.

   XML documents that are equivalent for the purposes of many
   applications may differ in their physical representation.  With XCAP
   resources, the canonical form with comments [19] of an XML document
   determines the logical equivalence.  In other words, the canonical
   specification determines how significant whitespace MUST be
   processed.  It also implies that, for example, new inserted
   attributes may appear in any order within the physical
   representation.

3.  Terminology

   In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
   and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [7] and
   indicate requirement levels for compliant implementations.



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4.  Definitions

   The following terms are used throughout this document:

   XCAP Resource:  An HTTP resource representing an XML document, an
      element within an XML document, or an attribute of an element
      within an XML document that follows the naming and validation
      constraints of XCAP.

   XCAP Server:  An HTTP server that understands how to follow the
      naming and validation constraints defined in this specification.

   XCAP Client:  An HTTP client that understands how to follow the
      naming and validation constraints defined in this specification.

   Application:  A collection of software components within a network
      whose operation depends on data managed and stored on an XCAP
      server.

   Application Usage:  Detailed information on the interaction of an
      application with the XCAP server.

   Application Unique ID (AUID):  A unique identifier within the
      namespace of application unique IDs created by this specification
      that differentiates XCAP resources accessed by one application
      from XCAP resources accessed by another.

   Naming Conventions:  The part of an application usage that specifies
      well-known URIs used by an application, or more generally,
      specifies the URIs that are typically accessed by an application
      during its processing.

   XCAP User Identifier (XUI):  The XUI is a string, valid as a path
      element in an HTTP URI, that is associated with each user served
      by the XCAP server.

   XCAP Root:  A context that contains all the documents across all
      application usages and users that are managed by the server.

   Document Selector:  A sequence of path segments, with each segment
      being separated by a "/", that identify the XML document within an
      XCAP root that is being selected.

   Node Selector:  A sequence of path segments, with each segment being
      separated by a "/", that identify the XML node (element or
      attribute) being selected within a document.





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   Node Selector Separator:  A single path segment equal to two tilde
      characters "~~" that is used to separate the document selector
      from the node selector within an HTTP URI.

   Document URI:  The HTTP URI containing the XCAP root and document
      selector, resulting in the selection of a specific document.  As a
      result, performing a GET against the document URI would retrieve
      the document.

   Node URI:  The HTTP URI containing the XCAP root, document selector,
      node selector separator, and node selector, resulting in the
      selection of a specific XML node.

   XCAP Root URI:  An HTTP URI that represents the XCAP root.  Although
      a syntactically valid URI, the XCAP Root URI does not correspond
      to an actual resource on an XCAP server.  Actual resources are
      created by appending additional path information to the XCAP Root
      URI.

   Global Tree:  A URI that represents the parent for all global
      documents for a particular application usage within a particular
      XCAP root.

   Home Directory:  A URI that represents the parent for all documents
      for a particular user for a particular application usage within a
      particular XCAP root.

   Positional Insertion:  A PUT operation that results in the insertion
      of a new element into a document such that its position, relative
      to other children of the same parent, is set by the client.

5.  Application Usages

   Each XCAP resource on a server is associated with an application.  In
   order for an application to use those resources, application specific
   conventions must be specified.  Those conventions include the XML
   schema that defines the structure and constraints of the data, well-
   known URIs to bootstrap access to the data, and so on.  All of those
   application specific conventions are defined by the application
   usage.

5.1.  Application Unique ID (AUID)

   Each application usage is associated with a name, called an
   Application Unique ID (AUID).  This name uniquely identifies the
   application usage within the namespace of application usages, and is
   different from AUIDs used by other applications.  AUIDs exist in one
   of two namespaces.  The first namespace is the IETF namespace.  This



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   namespace contains a set of tokens, each of which is registered with
   IANA.  These registrations occur with the publication of standards
   track RFCs [27], based on the guidelines in Section 15.  The second
   namespace is the vendor-proprietary namespace.  Each AUID in that
   namespace is prefixed with the reverse domain name of the
   organization creating the AUID, followed by a period, followed by any
   vendor defined token.  As an example, the example.com domain can
   create an AUID with the value "com.example.foo" but cannot create one
   with the value "org.example.foo".  AUIDs within the vendor namespace
   do not need to be registered with IANA.  The vendor namespace is also
   meant to be used in lab environments where no central registry is
   needed.  The syntax for AUIDs, expressed in ABNF [12] (and using some
   of the BNF defined in RFC 3986 [13]), is:

   AUID             =  global-a-uid / vendor-a-uid
   global-a-uid     =  a-uid
   a-uid            =  1*a-uid-char
   vendor-a-uid     =  rev-hostname "." a-uid
   rev-hostname     =  toplabel *( "." domainlabel  )
   domainlabel      =  alphanum
                       / alphanum *( alphanum / "-" ) alphanum
   toplabel         =  ALPHA / ALPHA *( alphanum / "-" ) alphanum
   a-uid-char       =  a-uid-unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims
                       / ":" / "@"
                                  ;pct-encoded from RFC 3986
                                  ;sub-delims from RFC 3986
   alphanum         = ALPHA / DIGIT
                                  ;DIGIT from RFC 4234
                                  ;ALPHA from RFC 4234
   a-uid-unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "_" / "~"

   The allowed characters for the auid production is a subset of the
   pchar production defined in RFC 3986.  In particular, it omits the
   ".", which allows for the auid to be separated from the reverse
   hostname.

5.2.  Default Document Namespace

   In order for the XCAP server to match a URI to an element or
   attribute of a document, any XML namespace prefixes used within the
   URI must be expanded [3].  This expansion requires a namespace
   binding context.  That context maps namespace prefixes to namespace
   URIs.  It also defines a default namespace that applies to elements
   in the URI without namespace prefixes.  The namespace binding context
   comes from two sources.  First, the mapping of namespace prefixes to
   namespace URIs is obtained from the URI itself (see Section 6.4).
   However, the default document namespace is defined by the application
   usage itself, and applies to all URIs referencing resources within



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   that application usage.  All application usages MUST define a
   namespace URI that represents the default document namespace to be
   used when evaluating URIs.  The default document namespace does not
   apply to elements or attributes within the documents themselves -- it
   applies only to the evaluation of URIs within that application usage.
   Indeed, the term 'default document namespace' is distinct from the
   term 'default namespace'.  The latter has the standard meaning within
   XML documents, and the former refers to the default used in
   evaluation of XCAP URIs.  XCAP does not change in any way the
   mechanisms for determining the default namespace within XML
   documents.  However, if a document contains a URI representing an
   XCAP resource, the default document namespace defined by the
   application usage applies to that URI as well.

5.3.  Data Validation

   One of the responsibilities of an XCAP server is to validate the
   content of each XCAP resource when an XCAP client tries to modify
   one.  This is done using two mechanisms.  Firstly, all application
   usages MUST describe their document contents using XML schema [2].
   The application usage MUST also identify the MIME type for documents
   compliant to that schema.

   Unfortunately, XML schemas cannot represent every form of data
   constraint.  As an example, one XML element may contain an integer
   that defines the maximum number of instances of another element.
   This constraint cannot be represented with XML schema.  However, such
   constraints may be important to the application usage.  The
   application usage defines any additional constraints beyond those in
   the schema.

   Of particular importance are uniqueness constraints.  In many cases,
   an application will require that there be only one instance of some
   element or attribute within a particular scope.  Each uniqueness
   constraint needs to be specified by identifying the field, or
   combinations of fields, that need to be unique, and then identifying
   the scope in which that uniqueness applies.  One typical scope is the
   set of all elements of a certain name within the same parent.
   Another typical scope is the set of all URIs valid within a
   particular domain.  In some cases, these constraints can be specified
   using XML schema, which provides the  element for this
   purpose.  Other uniqueness constraints, such as URI uniqueness across
   a domain, cannot be expressed by schema.  Whether or not the schema
   is used to express some of the uniqueness requirements, the
   application usage MUST specify all uniqueness requirements when it
   defines its data validation needs.





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   For example, the resource lists application usage [22] requires that
   each  element have a unique value for the "name" attribute
   within a single parent.  As another example, the RLS services
   application usage [22] requires that the value of the "uri" attribute
   of the  element be a URI that is unique within the domain of
   the URI.

   URI constraints represent another form of constraints.  These are
   constraints on the scheme or structure of the scheme-specific part of
   the URI.  These kinds of constraints cannot be expressed in an XML
   schema.  If these constraints are important to an application usage,
   they need to be explicitly called out.

   Another important data constraint is referential integrity.
   Referential integrity is important when the name or value of an
   element or attribute is used as a key to select another element or
   attribute.  An application usage MAY specify referential integrity
   constraints.  However, XCAP servers are not a replacement for
   Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), and therefore clients
   MUST NOT depend on servers to maintain referential integrity.  XCAP
   clients are responsible for making all the appropriate changes to
   documents in order to maintain referential integrity.

   Another constraint is character encoding.  XML allows documents to be
   encoded using several different character sets.  However, this
   specification mandates that all documents used with XCAP MUST be
   encoded using UTF-8.  This cannot be changed by an application usage.

   The data validation information is consumed by both clients, which
   use them to make sure they construct requests that will be accepted
   by the server, and by servers, which validate the constraints when
   they receive a request (with the exception of referential integrity
   constraints, which are not validated by the server).

5.4.  Data Semantics

   For each application usage, the data present in the XML document has
   a well-defined semantic.  The application usage defines that
   semantic, so that a client can properly construct a document in order
   to achieve the desired result.  They are not used by the server, as
   it is purposefully unaware of the semantics of the data it is
   managing.  The data semantics are expressed in English prose by the
   application usage.

   One particularly important semantic is the base URI that is to be
   used for the resolution of any relative URI references pointed to
   XCAP resources.  As discussed below, relative URI references pointing
   to XCAP resources cannot be resolved using the retrieval URI as the



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   base URI.  Therefore, it is up to the application usage to specify
   the base URI.

5.5.  Naming Conventions

   In addition to defining the meaning of the document in the context of
   a particular application, an application usage has to specify how the
   applications obtain the documents they need.  In particular, it needs
   to define any well-known URIs used for bootstrapping purposes, and
   document any other conventions on the URIs used by an application.
   It should also document how documents reference each other.  These
   conventions are called naming conventions.

   For many application usages, users need only a single document.  In
   such a case, it is RECOMMENDED that the application usage require
   that this document be called "index" and exist within the user's home
   directory.

   As an example, the RLS services application usage allows an RLS to
   obtain the contents of a resource list when the RLS receives a
   SUBSCRIBE request for a SIP URI identifying an RLS service.  The
   application usage specifies that the list of service definitions is
   present within a specific document with a specific name within the
   global tree.  This allows the RLS to perform a single XCAP request to
   fetch the service definition for the service associated with the SIP
   URI in a SUBSCRIBE request.

   Naming conventions are used by XCAP clients to construct their URIs.
   The XCAP server does not make use of them.

5.6.  Resource Interdependencies

   When a user modifies an XCAP resource, the content of many other
   resources is affected.  For example, when a user deletes an XML
   element within a document, it does so by issuing a DELETE request
   against the URI for the element resource.  However, deleting this
   element also deletes all child elements and their attributes, each of
   which is also an XCAP resource.  As such, manipulation of one
   resource affects the state of other resources.

   For the most part, these interdependencies are fully specified by the
   XML schema used by the application usage.  However, in some
   application usages, there is a need for the server to relate
   resources together, and such a relationship cannot be specified
   through a schema.  This occurs when changes in one document will
   affect another document.  Typically, this is the case when an
   application usage is defining a document that acts as a collection of
   information defined in other documents.



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   As an example, when a user creates a new RLS service (that is, it
   creates a new  element within an RLS services document), the
   server adds that element to a read-only global list of services
   maintained by the server in the global tree.  This read-only global
   list is accessed by the RLS when processing a SIP SUBSCRIBE request.

   Resource interdependencies are used by both XCAP clients and servers.

5.7.  Authorization Policies

   By default, each user is able to access (read, modify, and delete)
   all the documents below their home directory, and any user is able to
   read documents within the global directory.  However, only trusted
   users, explicitly provisioned into the server, can modify global
   documents.

   The application usage can specify a different authorization policy
   that applies to all documents associated with that application usage.
   An application usage can also specify whether another application
   usage is used to define the authorization policies.  An application
   usage for setting authorization policies can also be defined
   subsequent to the definition of the main application usage.  In such
   a case, the main application usage needs only to specify that such a
   usage will be defined in the future.

   If an application usage does not wish to change the default
   authorization policy, it can merely state that the default policy is
   used.

   The authorization policies defined by the application usage are used
   by the XCAP server during its operation.

5.8.  Data Extensibility

   An XCAP server MUST understand an application usage in order to
   process an HTTP request made against a resource for that particular
   application usage.  However, it is not required for the server to
   understand all of the contents of a document used by an application
   usage.  A server is required to understand the baseline schema
   defined by the application usage.  However, those schemas can define
   points of extensibility where new content can be added from other
   namespaces and corresponding schemas.  Sometimes, the server will
   understand those namespaces and therefore have access to their
   schemas.  Sometimes, it will not.

   A server MUST allow for documents that contain elements from
   namespaces not known to the server.  In such a case, the server




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   cannot validate that such content is schema compliant; it will only
   verify that the XML is well-formed.

   If a client wants to verify that a server supports a particular
   namespace before operating on a resource, it can query the server for
   its capabilities using the XCAP Capabilities application usage,
   discussed in Section 12.

5.9.  Documenting Application Usages

   Application usages are documented in specifications that convey the
   information described above.  In particular, an application usage
   specification MUST provide the following information:

   o  Application Unique ID (AUID): If the application usage is meant
      for general use on the Internet, the application usage MUST
      register the AUID into the IETF tree using the IANA procedures
      defined in Section 15.

   o  XML Schema

   o  Default Document Namespace

   o  MIME Type

   o  Validation Constraints

   o  Data Semantics

   o  Naming Conventions

   o  Resource Interdependencies

   o  Authorization Policies

5.10.  Guidelines for Creating Application Usages

   The primary design task when creating a new application usage is to
   define the schema.  Although XCAP can be used with any XML document,
   intelligent schema design will improve the efficiency and utility of
   the document when it is manipulated with XCAP.

   XCAP provides three fundamental ways to select elements amongst a set
   of siblings: by the expanded name of the element, by its position, or
   by the value of a specific attribute.  Positional selection always
   allows a client to get exactly what it wants.  However, it requires a
   client to cache a copy of the document in order to construct the
   predicate.  Furthermore, if a client performs a PUT, it requires the



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   client to reconstruct the PUT processing that a server would follow
   in order to update its local cached copy.  Otherwise, the client will
   be forced to re-GET the document after every PUT, which is
   inefficient.  As such, it is a good idea to design schemas such that
   common operations can be performed without requiring the client to
   cache a copy of the document.

   Without positional selection, a client can pick the element at each
   step by its expanded name or the value of an attribute.  Many schemas
   include elements that can be repeated within a parent (often,
   minOccurs equals zero or one, and maxOccurs is unbounded).  As such,
   all of the elements have the same name.  This leaves the attribute
   value as the only way to select an element.  Because of this, if an
   application usage expects the user to manipulate elements or
   attributes that are descendants of an element that can repeat, that
   element SHOULD include, in its schema, an attribute that can be
   suitably used as a unique index.  Furthermore, the naming conventions
   defined by that application usage SHOULD specify this uniqueness
   constraint explicitly.

   URIs often make a good choice for such a unique index.  They have
   fundamental uniqueness properties, and are also usually of semantic
   significance in the application usage.  However, care must be taken
   when using a URI as an attribute value.  URI equality is usually
   complex.  However, attribute equality is performed by the server
   using XML rules, which are based on case sensitive string comparison.
   Thus, XCAP will match URIs based on lexical equality, not functional
   equality.  In such cases, an application usage SHOULD consider these
   implications carefully.

   XCAP provides the ability of a client to operate on a single element,
   attribute, or document at a time.  As a result, it may be possible
   that common operations the client might perform will require a
   sequence of multiple requests.  This is inefficient, and introduces
   the possibility of failure conditions when another client modifies
   the document in the middle of a sequence.  In such a case, the client
   will be forced to detect this case using entity tags (discussed below
   in Section 7.11), and undo its previous changes.  This is very
   difficult.

   As a result, the schemas SHOULD be defined so that common operations
   generally require a single request to perform.  Consider an example.
   Let's say an application usage is defining permissions for users to
   perform certain operations.  The schema can be designed in two ways.
   The top level of the tree can identify users, and within each user,
   there can be the permissions associated with the user.  In an
   alternative design, the top level of the tree identifies each
   permission, and within that permission, the set of users who have it.



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   If, in this application usage, it is common to change the permission
   for a user from one value to another, the former schema design is
   better for xcap; it will require a single PUT to make such a change.
   In the latter case, either the entire document needs to be replaced
   (which is a single operation), or two PUT operations need to occur --
   one to remove the user from the old permission, and one to add the
   user to the new permission.

   Naming conventions form another key part of the design of an
   application usage.  The application usage should be certain that XCAP
   clients know where to "start" to retrieve and modify documents of
   interest.  Generally, this will involve the specification of a well-
   known document at a well-known URI.  That document can contain
   references to other documents that the client needs to read or
   modify.

6.  URI Construction

   In order to manipulate an XCAP resource, the data must be represented
   by an HTTP URI.  XCAP defines a specific naming convention for
   constructing these URIs.  The URI is constructed by concatenating the
   XCAP root with the document selector with the node selector separator
   with a percent-encoded form of the node selector.  This is followed
   by an optional query component that defines namespace bindings used
   in evaluating the URI.  The XCAP root is the enclosing context in
   which all XCAP resources live.  The document selector is a path that
   identifies a document within the XCAP root.  The node selector
   separator is a path segment with a value of double tilde ("~~"), and
   SHOULD NOT be percent-encoded, as advised in Section 2.3 of RFC 3986
   [13].  URIs containing %7E%7E should be normalized to ~~ for
   comparison; they are equivalent.  The node selector separator is a
   piece of syntactic sugar that separates the document selector from
   the node selector.  The node selector is an expression that
   identifies a component of the document, such as an element or
   attribute.  It is possible that a "~~" appears as part of the node
   selector itself; in such a case, the first "~~" in the URI is the
   node selector separator.

   The sections below describe these components in more detail.

6.1.  XCAP Root

   The root of the XCAP hierarchy is called the XCAP root.  It defines
   the context in which all other resources exist.  The XCAP root is
   represented with an HTTP URI, called the XCAP Root URI.  This URI is
   a valid HTTP URI; however, it doesn't point to any resource that
   actually exists on the server.  Its purpose is to identify the root
   of the tree within the domain where all XCAP documents are stored.



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   It can be any valid HTTP URI, but MUST NOT contain a query component
   (a complete XCAP URI may have a query component, but it is not part
   of the XCAP root URI).  It is RECOMMENDED that it be equal to
   xcap.domain, where domain is the domain of the provider.  As an
   example, "http://xcap.example.com" might be used as the XCAP root URI
   within the example.com domain.  Typically, the XCAP root URI is
   provisioned into client devices.  If not explicitly provisioned,
   clients SHOULD assume the form xcap.domain, where domain is the
   domain of their service provider (for SIP, this would be the domain
   part of their Address-of-Record (AOR)).  A server or domain MAY
   support multiple XCAP root URIs.  In such a case, it is effectively
   operating as if it were serving separate domains.  There is never
   information carryover or interactions between resources in different
   XCAP root URIs.

   When a client generates an HTTP request to a URI identifying an XCAP
   resource, RFC 2616 procedures for the construction of the Request-URI
   apply.  In particular, the authority component of the URI may not be
   present in the Request-URI if the request is sent directly to the
   origin server.

   The XCAP root URI can also be a relative HTTP URI.  It is the
   responsibility of the application usage to specify the base URI for
   an HTTP URI representing an XCAP resource whenever such a URI appears
   within a document defined by that application usage.  Generally
   speaking, it is unsafe to use the retrieval URI as the base URI.
   This is because any URI that points to an ancestor for a particular
   element or attribute can contain content including that element or
   attribute.  If that element or attribute contained a relative URI
   reference, it would be resolved relative to whatever happened to be
   used to retrieve the content, and this will often not be the base URI
   defined by the application usage.

6.2.  Document Selector

   Each document within the XCAP root is identified by its document
   selector.  The document selector is a sequence of path segments,
   separated by a slash ("/").  These path segments define a
   hierarchical structure for organizing documents within any XCAP root.
   The first path segment MUST be the XCAP AUID.  So, continuing the
   example above, all of the documents used by the resource lists
   application would be under "http://xcap.example.com/resource-lists".

   o  Implementors making use of HTTP servlets should be aware that XCAP
      may require them to get authorization from the server
      administrator to place resources within this specific subset of
      the URI namespace.




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   It is assumed that each application will have data that is set by
   users, and/or it will have global data that applies to all users.  As
   a result, beneath each AUID, there are two sub-trees.  One, called
   "users", holds the documents that are applicable to specific users,
   and the other, called "global", holds documents applicable to all
   users.  The sub-tree beneath "global" is called the global tree.  The
   path segment after the AUID MUST either be "global" or "users".

   Within the "users" tree are zero or more sub-trees, each of which
   identifies documents that apply to a specific user.  Each user known
   to the server is associated with a username, called the XCAP User
   Identifier (XUI).  Typically, an endpoint is provisioned with the
   value of the XUI.  For systems that support SIP applications, it is
   RECOMMENDED that the XUI be equal to the Address-of-Record (AOR) for
   the user (i.e., sip:joe@example.com).  Since SIP endpoints generally
   know their AOR, they will also know their XUI.  As a consequence, if
   no XUI is explicitly provisioned, a SIP User Agent SHOULD assume it
   is equal to their AOR.  This XUI MUST be used as the path segment
   beneath the "users" segment.  Since the SIP URI allows for characters
   that are not permitted in HTTP URI path segments (such as the '?' and
   '/' characters, which are permitted in the user part of the SIP URI),
   any such characters MUST be percent encoded.  The sub-tree beneath an
   XUI for a particular user is called their home directory.  "User" in
   this context should be interpreted loosely; a user might correspond
   to a device, for example.

   XCAP does not itself define what it means for documents to "apply" to
   a user, beyond specification of a baseline authorization policy,
   described below in Section 8.  Each application usage can specify
   additional authorization policies that depend on data used by the
   application itself.

   The remainder of the document selector (the path following "global"
   or the XUI) points to specific documents for that application usage.
   Subdirectories are permitted, but are NOT RECOMMENDED.  XCAP provides
   no way to create sub-directories or to list their contents, thus
   limiting their utility.  If subdirectories are used, there MUST NOT
   be a document in a directory with the same name as a sub-directory.

   The final path segment in the document selector identifies the actual
   document in the hierarchy.  This is equivalent to a filename, except
   that XCAP does not require that its document resources be stored as
   files in a file system.  However, the term "filename" is used to
   describe the final path segment in the document selector.  In
   traditional filesystems, the filename would have a filename
   extension, such as ".xml".  There is nothing in this specification
   that requires or prevents such extensions from being used in the
   filename.  In some cases, the application usage will specify a naming



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   convention for documents, and those naming conventions may or may not
   specify a file extension.  For example, in the RLS services
   application usage [22], documents in the user's home directory with
   the filename "index" will be used by the server to compute the global
   index, which is also a document with the filename "index".  Barring
   specific guidelines in the application usage, if a user has a single
   document for a particular application usage, this SHOULD be called
   "index".

   When the naming conventions in an application usage do not constrain
   the filename conventions (or, more generally, the document selector),
   an application will know the filename (or more generally, the
   document selector) because it is included as a reference in a
   document accessed by the client.  As another example, within the
   index document defined by RLS services, the  element has a
   child element called  whose content is a URI pointing
   to a resource list within the users home directory.

   As a result, if the user creates a new document, and then references
   that document from a well-known document (such as the index document
   above), it doesn't matter whether or not the user includes an
   extension in the filename, as long as the user is consistent and
   maintains referential integrity.

   As an example, the path segment
   "/resource-lists/users/sip:joe@example.com/index" is a document
   selector.  Concatenating the XCAP root URI with the document selector
   produces the HTTP URI "http://xcap.example.com/resource-lists/users/
   sip:joe@example.com/index".  In this URI, the AUID is "resource-
   lists", and the document is in the user tree with the XUI
   "sip:joe@example.com" with filename "index".

6.3.  Node Selector

   The node selector specifies specific nodes of the XML document that
   are to be accessed.  A node refers to an XML element, an attribute of
   an element, or a set of namespace bindings.  The node selector is an
   expression that identifies an element, attribute, or set of namespace
   bindings.  Its grammar is:

   node-selector          = element-selector ["/" terminal-selector]
   terminal-selector      = attribute-selector / namespace-selector /
                            extension-selector
   element-selector       = step *( "/" step)
   step                   = by-name / by-pos / by-attr / by-pos-attr /
                            extension-selector
   by-name                = NameorAny
   by-pos                 = NameorAny "[" position "]"



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   position               = 1*DIGIT
   attr-test              = "@" att-name "=" att-value
   by-attr                = NameorAny "[" attr-test "]"
   by-pos-attr            = NameorAny "[" position "]" "[" attr-test "]"
   NameorAny              = QName / "*"   ; QName from XML Namespaces
   att-name               = QName
   att-value              = AttValue      ; from XML specification
   attribute-selector     = "@" att-name
   namespace-selector     = "namespace::*"
   extension-selector     = 1*( %x00-2e / %x30-ff )  ; anything but "/"

   The QName grammar is defined in the XML namespaces [3] specification,
   and the AttValue grammar is defined in the XML specification XML 1.0
   [1].

   The extension-selector is included for purposes of extensibility.  It
   can be composed of any character except the slash, which is the
   delimiter amongst steps.  Any characters in an extension that cannot
   be represented in a URI MUST be percent-encoded before placement into
   a URI.

   Note that the double quote, left square bracket and right square
   bracket characters, which are meaningful to XCAP, cannot be directly
   represented in the HTTP URI.  As a result, they are percent-encoded
   when placed within the HTTP URI.  In addition to these characters, an
   apostrophe (') character can be used as a delimiter within XPath
   expressions.  Furthermore, since XML allows for non-ASCII characters,
   the names of elements and attributes may not be directly
   representable in a URI.  Any such characters MUST be represented by
   converting them to an octet sequence corresponding to their
   representation in UTF-8, and then percent-encoding that sequence of
   octets.

   Similarly, the XML specification defines the QName production for the
   grammar for element and attribute names, and the AttValue production
   for the attribute values.  Unfortunately, the characters permitted by
   these productions include some that are not allowed for pchar, which
   is the production for the allowed set of characters in path segments
   in the URI.  The AttValue production allows many such characters
   within the US-ASCII set, including the space.  Those characters MUST
   be percent-encoded when placed in the URI.  Furthermore, QName and
   AttValue allow many Unicode characters, outside of US-ASCII.  When
   these characters need to be represented in the HTTP URI, they are
   percent-encoded.  To do this, the data should be encoded first as
   octets according to the UTF-8 character encoding [18], and then only
   those octets that do not correspond to characters in the pchar set
   should be percent-encoded.  For example, the character A would be
   represented as "A", the character LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE



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   would be represented as "%C3%80", and the character KATAKANA LETTER A
   would be represented as "%E3%82%A2".

   As a result, the grammar above represents the expressions processed
   by the XCAP server internally after it has decoded the URI.  The on-
   the-wire format is dictated by RFC 3986 [13].  In the discussions and
   examples below, when the node selectors are not part of an HTTP URI,
   they are presented in their internal format prior to encoding.  If an
   example includes a node selector within an HTTP URI, it is presented
   in its percent-encoded form.

   The node selector is based on the concepts in XPath [10].  Indeed,
   the node selector expression, before it is percent-encoded for
   representation in the HTTP URI, happens to be a valid XPath
   expression.  However, XPath provides a set of functionality far
   richer than is needed here, and its breadth would introduce much
   unneeded complexity into XCAP.

   To determine the XML element, attribute, or namespace bindings
   selected by the node selector, processing begins at the root node of
   the XML document.  The first step in the element selector is then
   taken.  Each step chooses a single XML element within the current
   document context.  The document context is the point within the XML
   document from which a specific step is evaluated.  The document
   context begins at the root node of the document.  When a step
   determines an element within that context, that element becomes the
   new context for evaluation of the next step.  Each step can select an
   element by its name (expanded), by a combination of name and
   attribute value, by name and position, or by name, position and
   attribute.  In all cases, the name can be wildcarded, so that all
   elements get selected.

   The selection operation operates as follows.  Within the current
   document context, the children of that context are enumerated in
   document order.  If the context is the root node of the document, its
   child element is the root element of the document.  If the context is
   an element, its children are all of the children of that element
   (naturally).  Next, those elements whose name is not a match for
   NameorAny are discarded.  An element name is a match if NameorAny is
   the wildcard, or if it is not a wildcard, the element name matches
   NameorAny.  Matching is discussed below.  The result is an ordered
   list of elements.

   The elements in the list are further filtered by the predicates,
   which are the expressions in square brackets following NameorAny.
   Each predicate further prunes the elements from the current ordered
   list.  These predicates are evaluated in order.  If the content of
   the predicate is a position, the position-th element is selected



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   (that is, treat "position" as a variable, and take the element whose
   position equals that variable), and all others are discarded.  If
   there are fewer elements in the list than the value of position, the
   result is a no-match.

   If the content of the predicate is an attribute name and value, all
   elements possessing an attribute with that name and value are
   selected, and all others are discarded.  Note that, although a
   document can have namespace declarations within elements, those
   elements cannot be selected using a namespace declaration as a
   predicate.  That is, a step like "el-name[@xmlns='namespace']" will
   never match an element, even if there is an element in the list that
   specifies a default namespace of "namespace".  In other words, a
   namespace node is NOT an attribute.  If the namespaces in scope for
   an element are needed, they can be selected using the namespace-
   selector described below.  If there are no elements with attributes
   having the given name and value, the result is a no-match.

   After the predicates have been applied, the result will be a
   no-match, one element, or multiple elements.  If the result is
   multiple elements, the node selector is invalid.  Each step in a node
   selector MUST produce a single element to form the context for the
   next step.  This is more restrictive than general XPath expressions,
   which allow a context to contain multiple nodes.  If the result is a
   no-match, the node selector is invalid.  The node selector is only
   valid if a single element was selected.  This element becomes the
   context for the evaluation of the next step in the node selector
   expression.

   The last location step is either the previously described element
   selector or a "terminal selector".  If the terminal selector is an
   attribute selector, the server checks to see if there is an attribute
   with the same expanded name in the current element context.  If there
   is not, the result is considered a no-match.  Otherwise, that
   attribute is selected.  If the terminal selector is a namespace
   selector, the result is equal to the set of namespace bindings in
   scope for the element, including the possible default namespace
   declaration.  This specification defines a syntax for representing
   namespace bindings, so they can be returned to the client in an HTTP
   response.

   As a result, once the entire node selector is evaluated against the
   document, the result will either be a no-match, invalid, a single
   element, a single attribute, or a set of namespace bindings.

   Matching of element names is performed as follows.  The element being
   compared in the step has its name expanded as described in XML
   namespaces [3].  The element name in the step is also expanded.  This



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   expansion requires that any namespace prefix is converted to its
   namespace URI.  Doing that requires a set of bindings from prefixes
   to namespace URIs.  This set of bindings is obtained from the query
   component of the URI (see Section 6.4).  If the prefix of the QName
   of an element is empty, the corresponding URI is then the default
   document namespace URI defined by the application usage, or null if
   not defined.  Comparisons are then performed as described in XML
   namespaces [3].  Note that the namespace prefix expansions described
   here are different than those specified in the XPath 1.0
   specification, but are closer to those currently defined by the XPath
   2.0 specification [24].

   Matching of attribute names proceeds in a similar way.  The attribute
   in the document has its name expanded as described in XML namespaces
   [3].  If the attribute name in the attribute selector has a namespace
   prefix, its name is expanded using the namespace bindings obtained
   from the query component of the URI.  An unprefixed attribute QName
   is in no namespace.

   Comments, text content (including whitespace), and processing
   instructions can be present in a document, but cannot be selected by
   the expressions defined here.  Of course, if such information is
   present in a document, and a user selects an XML element enclosing
   that data, that information would be included in a resulting GET, for
   example.  Furthermore, whitespace is respected by XCAP.  If a client
   PUTs an element or document that contains whitespace, the server
   retains that whitespace, and will return the element or document back
   to the client with exactly the same whitespace.  Similarly, when an
   element is inserted, no additional whitespace is added around the
   inserted element, and the element gets inserted in a very specific
   location relative to any whitespace, comments, or processing
   instructions around it.  Section 8.2.3 describes where the insertion
   occurs.


















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   As an example, consider the following XML document:

   
   
     
       sip:userA@example.net
       sip:userB@example.org
     
   

                      Figure 3: Example XML Document

   Assuming that the default document namespace for this application
   usage is "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:watcherinfo", the node selector
   watcherinfo/watcher-list/watcher[@id="8ajksjda7s"] would select the
   following XML element:

   sip:userA@example.net

6.4.  Namespace Bindings for the Selector

   In order to expand the namespace prefixes used in the node selector,
   a set of bindings from those namespace prefixes to namespace URI must
   be used.  Those bindings are contained in the query component of the
   URI.  If no query component is present, it means that only the
   default document namespace (as identified by the application usage)
   is defined.  The query component is formatted as a valid xpointer
   expression [5] after suitable URI encoding as defined in Section 4.1
   of the Xpointer framework.  This xpointer expression SHOULD only
   contain expressions from the xmlns() scheme [4].  A server compliant
   to this specification MUST ignore any xpointer expressions not from
   the xmlns() scheme.  The xmlns() xpointer expressions define the set
   of namespace bindings in use for evaluating the URI.

   Note that xpointer expressions were originally designed for usage
   within fragment identifiers of URIs.  However, within XCAP, they are
   used within query components of URIs.



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   The following example shows a more complex matching operation, this
   time including the usage of namespace bindings.  Consider the
   following document:

   
   
     
       
       
     
     
       
     
   

   Assume that this document has a document URI of
   "http://xcap.example.com/test/users/sip:joe@example.com/index", where
   "test" is the application usage.  This application usage defines a
   default document namespace of "urn:test:default-namespace".  The XCAP
   URI:

   http://xcap.example.com/test/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/
   ~~/foo/a:bar/b:baz?xmlns(a=urn:test:namespace1-uri)
   xmlns(b=urn:test:namespace1-uri)

   will select the first  child element of the  element in the
   document.  The XCAP URI:

   http://xcap.example.com/test/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/
   ~~/foo/a:bar/b:baz?xmlns(a=urn:test:namespace1-uri)
   xmlns(b=urn:test:namespace2-uri)

   will select the second  child element of the  element in
   the document.  The following XCAP URI will also select the second
    child element of the  element in the document:

   http://xcap.example.com/test/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/
   ~~/d:foo/a:bar/b:baz?xmlns(a=urn:test:namespace1-uri)
   xmlns(b=urn:test:namespace2-uri)
   xmlns(d=urn:test:default-namespace)

7.  Client Operations

   An XCAP client is an HTTP/1.1 compliant client.  Specific data
   manipulation tasks are accomplished by invoking the right set of HTTP
   methods with the right set of headers on the server.  This section
   describes those in detail.



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   In all cases where the client modifies a document, by deleting or
   inserting a document, element or attribute resource, the client
   SHOULD verify that, if the operation were to succeed, the resulting
   document would meet the data constraints defined by the application
   usage, including schema validation.  For example, if the client
   performs a PUT operation to "http://xcap.example.com/rls-services/
   users/sip:joe@example.com/mybuddies", rls-services is the application
   unique ID, and the constraints defined by it SHOULD be followed.

   The client will know what URI to use based on the naming conventions
   described by the application usage.

   If the document, after modification, does not meet the data
   constraints, the server will reject it with a 409.  The 409 response
   may contain an XML body, formatted according to the schema in
   Section 11.2, which provides further information on the nature of the
   error.  The client MAY use this information to try and alter the
   request so that, this time, it might succeed.  The client SHOULD NOT
   simply retry the request without changing some aspect of it.

   In some cases, the application usage will dictate a uniqueness
   constraint that the client cannot guarantee on its own.  One such
   example is that a URI has to be unique within a domain.  Typically,
   the client is not the owner of the domain, and so it cannot be sure
   that a URI is unique.  In such a case, the client can either generate
   a sufficiently random identifier, or it can pick a "vanity"
   identifier in the hopes that it is not taken.  In either case, if the
   identifier is not unique, the server will reject the request with a
   409 and suggest alternatives that the client can use to try again.
   If the server does not suggest alternatives, the client SHOULD
   attempt to use random identifiers with increasing amounts of
   randomness.

   HTTP also specifies that PUT and DELETE requests are idempotent.
   This means that, if the client performs a PUT on a document and it
   succeeds, it can perform the same PUT, and the resulting document
   will look the same.  Similarly, when a client performs a DELETE, if
   it succeeds, a subsequent DELETE to the same URI will generate a 404;
   the resource no longer exists on the server since it was deleted by
   the previous DELETE operation.  To maintain this property, the client
   SHOULD construct its URIs such that, after the modification has taken
   place, the URI in the request will point to the resource just
   inserted for PUT (i.e., the body of the request), and will point to
   nothing for DELETE.  If this property is maintained, it is the case
   that GET to the URI in the PUT will return the same content (i.e.,
   GET(PUT(X)) == x).  This property implies idempotency.  Although a
   request can still be idempotent if it does not possess this property,
   XCAP does not permit such requests.  If the client's request does not



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   have this property, the server will reject the request with a 409 and
   indicate a cannot-insert error condition.

   If the result of the PUT is a 200 or 201 response, the operation was
   successful.  Other response codes to any request, such as a
   redirection, are processed as per RFC 2616 [6].

7.1.  Create or Replace a Document

   To create or replace a document, the client constructs a URI that
   references the location where the document is to be placed.  This URI
   MUST be a document URI, and therefore contain the XCAP root and
   document selector.  The client then invokes a PUT method on that URI.

   The MIME content type MUST be the type defined by the application
   usage.  For example, it would be "application/rls-services+xml" for
   an RLS services [22] document, and not "application/xml".

   If the Request-URI identifies a document that already exists in the
   server, the PUT operation replaces that document with the content of
   the request.  If the Request-URI does not identify an existing
   document, the document is created on the server at that specific URI.

7.2.  Delete a Document

   To delete a document, the client constructs a URI that references the
   document to be deleted.  This URI MUST be a document URI.  The client
   then invokes a DELETE operation on the URI to delete the document.

7.3.  Fetch a Document

   As one would expect, fetching a document is trivially accomplished by
   performing an HTTP GET request with the Request URI set to the
   document URI.

7.4.  Create or Replace an Element

   To create or replace an XML element within an existing document, the
   client constructs a URI whose document selector points to the
   document to be modified.  The node selector MUST be present in the
   URI, delimited from the document selector with the node selector
   separator.  The query component MUST be present if the node selector
   makes use of namespace prefixes, in which case, the xmlns()
   expressions in the query component MUST define those prefixes.  To
   create this element within the document, the node selector is
   constructed such that it is a no-match against the current document,
   but if the element in the body of the request was added to the
   document as desired by the client, the node selector would select



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   that element.  To replace an element in the document, the node
   selector is constructed so that it is a match against the element in
   the current document to be replaced, as well as a match to the new
   element (present in the body of the PUT request) that is to replace
   it.

   Oftentimes, the client will wish to insert an element into a document
   in a certain position relative to other children of the same parent.
   This is called a positional insertion.  They often arise because the
   schema constrains where the element can occur, or because ordering of
   elements is significant within the schema.  To accomplish this, the
   client can use a node selector of the following form:

     parent/*[position][unique-attribute-value]

   Here, "parent" is an expression for the parent of the element to be
   inserted. "position" is the position amongst the existing child
   elements of this parent where the new element is to be inserted.
   "unique-attribute-value" is an attribute name and value for the
   element to be inserted, which is different from the current element
   in "position".  The second predicate is needed so that the overall
   expression is a no-match when evaluated against the current children.
   Otherwise, the PUT would replace the existing element in that
   position.  Note that in addition to wildcard "*" a QName can also be
   used as a node test.  The insert logic is described in more detail in
   Section 8.2.3.

   Consider the example document in Figure 3.  The client would like to
   insert a new  element as the second element underneath
   .  However, it cannot just PUT to a URI with the
   watcherinfo/watcher-list/*[2] node selector; this node selector would
   select the existing second child element of  and
   replace it.  Thus, the PUT has to be made to a URI with watcherinfo/
   watcher-list/*[2][@id="hhggff"] as the node selector, where "hhggff"
   is the value of the "id" attribute of the new element to be inserted.
   This node-selector is a no-match against the current document, and
   would be a match against the new element if it was inserted as the
   second child element of .

   The "*" indicates that all element children of  are to
   be considered when computing the position for insertion.  If, instead
   of a wildcard *, an element name (QName) was present, the expression
   above would insert the new element as the position-th element amongst
   those with the same expanded name (see Section 8.2.3 for a discussion
   on insertion rules).

   Once the client constructs the URI, it invokes the HTTP PUT method.
   The content in the request MUST be an XML element.  Specifically, it



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   contains the element, starting with the opening bracket for the begin
   tag for that element, including the attributes and content of that
   element (whether it be text or other child elements), and ending with
   the closing bracket for the end tag for that element.  The MIME type
   in the request MUST be "application/xcap-el+xml", defined in
   Section 15.2.1.  If the node selector, when evaluated against the
   current document, results in a no-match, the server performs a
   creation operation.  If the node selector, when evaluated against the
   current document, is a match for an element in the current document,
   the server replaces it with the content of the PUT request.  This
   replacement is complete; that is, the old element (including its
   attributes, namespace declarations and content: text, element,
   comment and processing instruction nodes) are removed, and the new
   one, including its attributes, namespace declarations and content, is
   put in its place.

   To be certain that element insertions have the GET(PUT(x))==x
   property, the client can check that the attribute predicates in the
   final path segment of the URI match the attributes of the element in
   the body of the request.  As an example of a request that would not
   have this property, and therefore would not be idempotent, consider
   the following PUT request (URIs are line-folded for readability):

   PUT
   /rls-services/users/sip:bill@example.com/index/~~/rls-services/
   service%5b@uri=%22sip:good-friends@example.com%22%5d
    HTTP/1.1
   Content-Type:application/xcap-el+xml
   Host: xcap.example.com

   
     http://xcap.example.com/resource-lists/users
   /sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/resource-lists/list%5b@name=%22l1%22%5d
   
     
      presence
     
   

   This request will fail with a 409.  The Request URI contains a final
   path segment with a predicate based on attributes:
   @uri="sip:good-friends@example.com".  However, this will not match
   the value of the "uri" attribute in the element in the body
   (sip:mybuddies@example.com).

   The GET(PUT(x))==x property introduces some limitations on the types
   of operations possible.  It will not be possible to replace an
   element with one that has a new value for an attribute that is the



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   sole unique element identifier, if the URI contained a node selector
   that was using the previous value of that attribute for purposes of
   selecting the element.  This is exactly the use case in the example
   above.  To get around this limitation, the selection can be done by
   position instead of attribute value, or the parent of the element to
   be replaced can be selected, and then the body of the PUT operation
   would contain the parent, the child to be replaced, and all other
   siblings.

7.5.  Delete an Element

   To delete an element from a document, the client constructs a URI
   whose document selector points to the document containing the element
   to be deleted.  The node selector MUST identify a single element.
   The node selector MUST be present following the node selector
   separator, and identify the specific element to be deleted.
   Furthermore, the node selector MUST match no element after the
   deletion of the target element.  This is required to maintain the
   idempotency property of HTTP deletions.  The query component MUST be
   present if the node selector makes use of namespace prefixes, in
   which case the xmlns() expressions in the query component MUST define
   those prefixes.

   If the client wishes to delete an element in a specific position,
   this is referred to as a positional deletion.  Like a positional
   insertion, the node selector has the following form:

     parent/*[position][unique-attribute-value]

   Where "parent" is an expression for the parent of the element to be
   deleted, "position" is the position of the element to be deleted
   amongst the existing child elements of this parent, and "unique-
   attribute-value" is an attribute name and value for the element to be
   deleted, where this attribute name and value are different than any
   of the siblings of the element.

   Positional deletions without using a unique attribute name and value
   are possible, but only in limited cases where idempotency is
   guaranteed.  In particular, if a DELETE operation refers to an
   element by name and position alone (parent/elname[n]), this is
   permitted only when the element to be deleted is the last element
   amongst all its siblings with that name.  Similarly, if a DELETE
   operation refers to an element by position alone (parent/*[n]), this
   is permitted only when the element to be deleted is the last amongst
   all sibling elements, regardless of name.

   The client then invokes the HTTP DELETE method.  The server will
   remove the element from the document (including its attributes,



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   namespace declarations, and its descendant nodes, such as any
   children).

7.6.  Fetch an Element

   To fetch an element of a document, the client constructs a URI whose
   document selector points to the document containing the element to be
   fetched.  The node selector MUST be present following the node
   selector separator, and must identify the element to be fetched.  The
   query component MUST be present if the node selector makes use of
   namespace prefixes, in which case the xmlns() expressions in the
   query component MUST define those prefixes.

   The client then invokes the GET method.  The 200 OK response will
   contain that XML element.  Specifically, it contains the content of
   the XML document, starting with the opening bracket for the begin tag
   for that element, and ending with the closing bracket for the end tag
   for that element.  This will, as a result, include all attributes,
   namespace declarations and descendant nodes: elements, comments,
   text, and processing instructions of that element.

7.7.  Create or Replace an Attribute

   To create or replace an attribute in an existing element of a
   document, the client constructs a URI whose document selector points
   to the document to be modified.  The node selector, following the
   node selector separator, MUST be present.  The node selector MUST be
   constructed such that, if the attribute was created or replaced as
   desired, the node selector would select that attribute.  If the node
   selector, when evaluated against the current document, results in a
   no-match, it is a creation operation.  If it matches an existing
   attribute, it is a replacement operation.  The query component MUST
   be present if the node selector makes use of namespace prefixes, in
   which case the xmlns() expressions in the query component MUST define
   those prefixes.

   The client then invokes the HTTP PUT method.  The content defined by
   the request MUST be the value of the attribute, compliant to the
   grammar for AttValue as defined in XML 1.0 [1].  Note that, unlike
   when AttValue is present in the URI, there is no percent-encoding of
   the body.  This request MUST be sent with the Content-Type of
   "application/xcap-att+xml" as defined in Section 15.2.2.  The server
   will add the attribute such that, if the node selector is evaluated
   on the resulting document, it will return the attribute present in
   the request.

   To be certain that attribute insertions have the GET(PUT(x))==x
   property, the client can check that any attribute predicate in the



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   path segment that selects the element into which the attribute is
   inserted, matches a different attribute than the one being inserted
   by the request.  As an example of a request that would not have this
   property, and therefore would not be idempotent, consider the
   following PUT request (URIs are line-folded for readability):

   PUT
   /rls-services/users/sip:bill@example.com/index/~~/rls-services
   /service%5b@uri=%22sip:good-friends@example.com%22%5d/@uri
    HTTP/1.1
   Content-Type:application/xcap-att+xml
   Host: xcap.example.com

   "sip:bad-friends@example.com"

   This request will fail with a 409.

   As with element insertions and replacements, the GET(PUT(x))==x
   property introduces limitations on attribute replacements.  It will
   not be possible to replace the attribute value of an attribute, when
   that attribute is the sole unique element identifier, and the URI
   contains a node selector that uses the previous value of the
   attribute to select the affected element.  This is the use case in
   the example above.  Instead, the element can be selected
   positionally, or its entire parent replaced.

7.8.  Delete an Attribute

   To delete an attribute from the document, the client constructs a URI
   whose document selector points to the document containing the
   attribute to be deleted.  The node selector MUST be present following
   the node selector separator, and evaluate to an attribute in the
   document to be deleted.  The query component MUST be present if the
   node selector makes use of namespace prefixes, in which case the
   xmlns() expressions in the query component MUST define those
   prefixes.

   The client then invokes the HTTP DELETE method.  The server will
   remove the attribute from the document.

7.9.  Fetch an Attribute

   To fetch an attribute of a document, the client constructs a URI
   whose document selector points to the document containing the
   attribute to be fetched.  The node selector MUST be present following
   the node selector separator, containing an expression identifying the
   attribute whose value is to be fetched.  The query component MUST be
   present if the node selector makes use of namespace prefixes, in



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   which case the xmlns() expressions in the query component MUST define
   those prefixes.

   The client then invokes the GET method.  The 200 OK response will
   contain an "application/xcap-att+xml" document with the specified
   attribute, formatted according to the grammar of AttValue as defined
   in the XML 1.0 specifications.

7.10.  Fetch Namespace Bindings

   If a client wishes to insert an element or attribute into a document,
   and that element or attribute is part of a namespace declared
   elsewhere in the document, the client will need to know the namespace
   bindings in order to construct the XML content in the request.  If
   the client has a cached copy of the document, it will know the
   bindings.  However, if it doesn't have the whole document cached, it
   can be useful to fetch just the bindings that are in scope for an
   element, in order to construct a subsequent PUT request.

   To get those bindings, the client constructs a URI whose document
   selector points to the document containing the element whose
   namespace bindings are to be fetched.  The node selector MUST be
   present following the node selector separator, containing an
   expression identifying the desired namespace bindings.  The query
   component MUST be present if the node selector makes use of namespace
   prefixes, in which case the xmlns() expressions in the query
   component MUST define those prefixes.

   The client then invokes the GET method.  The 200 OK response will
   contain an "application/xcap-ns+xml" document with the namespace
   definitions.  The format for this document is defined in Section 10.

   A client cannot set the namespace prefixes in scope for an element.
   As such, a node selector that identifies namespace prefixes MUST NOT
   appear in a PUT or DELETE request.

7.11.  Conditional Operations

   The HTTP specification defines several header fields that can be used
   by a client to make the processing of the request conditional.  In
   particular, the If-None-Match and If-Match header fields allow a
   client to make them conditional on the current value of the entity
   tag for the resource.  These conditional operations are particularly
   useful for XCAP resources.

   For example, it is anticipated that clients will frequently wish to
   cache the current version of a document.  So, when the client starts
   up, it will fetch the current document from the server and store it.



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   When it does so, the GET response will contain the entity tag for the
   document resource.  Each resource within a document maintained by the
   server will share the same value of the entity tag.  As a result, the
   entity tag returned by the server for the document resource is
   applicable to element and attribute resources within the document.

   If the client wishes to insert or modify an element or attribute
   within the document, but it wants to be certain that the document
   hasn't been modified since the client last operated on it, it can
   include an If-Match header field in the request, containing the value
   of the entity tag known to the client for all resources within the
   document.  If the document has changed, the server will reject this
   request with a 412 response.  In that case, the client will need to
   flush its cached version, fetch the entire document, and store the
   new entity tag returned by the server in the 200 OK to the GET
   request.  It can then retry the request, placing the new entity tag
   in the If-Match header field.  If this succeeds, the Etag header
   field in the response to PUT contains the entity tag for the resource
   that was just inserted or modified.  Because all resources in a
   document share the same value for their entity tag, this entity tag
   value can be applied to the modification of other resources.

   A client can also conditionally delete elements or attributes by
   including an If-Match header field in DELETE requests.  Note that the
   200 OK responses to a DELETE will contain an Etag header field,
   containing the entity tag for all of the other resources in the
   document, even though the resource identified by the DELETE request
   no longer exists.

   When a client uses conditional PUT and DELETE operations, it can
   apply those changes to its local cached copy, and update the value of
   the entity tag for the locally cached copy based on the Etag header
   field returned in the response.  As long as no other clients try to
   modify the document, the client will be able to perform conditional
   operations on the document without ever having to perform separate
   GET operations to synchronize the document and its entity tags with
   the server.  If another client tries to modify the document, this
   will be detected by the conditional mechanisms, and the client will
   need to perform a GET to resynchronize its copy unless it has some
   other means to learn about the change.

   If a client does not perform a conditional operation, but did have a
   cached copy of the document, that cached copy will become invalid
   once the operation is performed (indeed, it may have become invalid
   even beforehand).  Unconditional operations should only be performed
   by clients when knowledge of the entire document is not important for
   the operation to succeed.




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   As another example, a when a client fetches a document, and there is
   an older version cached, it is useful for clients to use a
   conditional GET in order to reduce network usage if the cached copy
   is still valid.  This is done by including, in the GET request, the
   If-None-Match header field with a value equal to the current etag
   held by the client for the document.  The server will only generate a
   200 OK response if the etag held by the server differs than that held
   by the client.  If it doesn't differ, the server will respond with a
   304 response.

8.  Server Behavior

   An XCAP server is an HTTP/1.1 compliant origin server.  The behaviors
   mandated by this specification relate to the way in which the HTTP
   URI is interpreted and the content is constructed.

   An XCAP server MUST be explicitly aware of the application usage
   against which requests are being made.  That is, the server must be
   explicitly configured to handle URIs for each specific application
   usage, and must be aware of the constraints imposed by that
   application usage.

   When the server receives a request, the treatment depends on the URI.
   If the URI refers to an application usage not understood by the
   server, the server MUST reject the request with a 404 (Not Found)
   response.  If the URI refers to a user (identified by an XUI) that is
   not recognized by the
   server, it MUST reject the request with a 404 (Not Found).  If the
   URI includes extension-selectors that the server doesn't understand,
   it MUST reject the request with a 404 (Not Found).

   Next, the server authenticates the request.  All XCAP servers MUST
   implement HTTP Digest [11].  Furthermore, servers MUST implement HTTP
   over TLS, RFC 2818 [14].  It is RECOMMENDED that administrators use
   an HTTPS URI as the XCAP root URI, so that the digest client
   authentication occurs over TLS.

   Next, the server determines if the client has authorization to
   perform the requested operation on the resource.  The application
   usage defines the authorization policies.  An application usage may
   specify that the default is used.  This default is described in
   Section 5.7.

   Next, the server makes sure that it can properly evaluate the request
   URI.  The server MUST separate the document selector from the node
   selector, by splitting the URI at the first instance of the node
   selector separator ("~~").  The server MUST check the node selector
   in the request URI, if present.  If any qualified names are present



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   that use a namespace prefix, and that prefix is not defined in an
   xmlns() expression in the query component of the request URI, the
   server MUST reject the request with a 400 response.

   After checking the namespace prefix definitions, the specific
   behavior depends on the method and what the URI refers to.

8.1.  POST Handling

   XCAP resources do not represent processing scripts.  As a result,
   POST operations to HTTP URIs representing XCAP resources are not
   defined.  A server receiving such a request for an XCAP resource
   SHOULD return a 405.

8.2.  PUT Handling

   The behavior of a server in receipt of a PUT request is as specified
   in HTTP/1.1, Section 9.6 -- the content of the request is placed at
   the specified location.  This section serves to define the notion of
   "placement" and "specified location" within the context of XCAP
   resources.

   If the request URI contained a namespace-selector, the server MUST
   reject the request with a 405 (Method Not Allowed) and MUST include
   an Allow header field including the GET method.

8.2.1.  Locating the Parent

   The first step the server performs is to locate the parent, whether
   it is a directory or element, in which the resource is to be placed.
   To do that, the server removes the last path segment from the URI.
   The rest of the URI refers to the parent.  This parent can be a
   document, element, or prefix of a document selector (called a
   directory, even though this specification does not mandate that
   documents are actually stored in a filesystem).  This URI is called
   the parent URI.  The path segment that was removed is called the
   target selector, and the node (element, document, or attribute) it
   describes is called the target node.

   If the parent URI has no node selector separator, it is referring to
   the directory into which the document should be inserted.  In normal
   XCAP operations, this will be either the user's home directory or the
   global directory, which will always exist on the server.  However, if
   an application usage is making use of subdirectories (despite the
   fact that this is not recommended), it is possible that the directory
   into which the document should be inserted does not exist.  In this
   case, the server MUST return a 409 response, and SHOULD include a
   detailed conflict report including the  element.  Detailed



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   conflict reports are discussed in Section 11.  If the directory does
   exist, the server checks to see if there is a document with the same
   filename as the target node.  If there is, the operation is the
   replacement operation, discussed in Section 8.2.4.  If it does not
   exist, it is the creation operation discussed in Section 8.2.3.

   If the parent URI has a node selector separator, the document
   selector is extracted, and that document is retrieved.  If the
   document does not exist, the server MUST return a 409 response, and
   SHOULD include a detailed conflict report including the 
   element.  If it does exist, the node selector is extracted and
   decoded (recall that the node selector is percent-encoded).  The node
   selector is applied to the document based on the matching operations
   discussed in Section 6.3.  If the result is a no-match or invalid,
   the server MUST return a 409 response, and SHOULD include a detailed
   conflict report including the  element.

   If the node-selector is valid, the server examines the target
   selector, and evaluates it within the context of the parent node.  If
   the target node exists within the parent, the operation is a
   replacement, as described in Section 8.2.4.  If it does not exist, it
   is the creation operation, discussed in Section 8.2.3.

   Before performing the replacement or creation, as determined based on
   the logic above, the server validates the content of the request as
   described in Section 8.2.2.

8.2.2.  Verifying Document Content

   If the PUT request is for a document (the request URI had no node
   selector separator), the content of the request body has to be a
   well-formed XML document.  If it is not, the server MUST reject the
   request with a 409 response code.  That response SHOULD include a
   detailed conflict report including the  element.  If
   the document is well-formed but not UTF-8 encoded, the server MUST
   reject the request with a 409 response code.  That response SHOULD
   include a detailed conflict report including the  element.
   If the MIME type in the Content-Type header field of the request is
   not equal to the MIME type defined for the application usage, the
   server MUST reject the request with a 415.

   If the PUT request is for an element, the content of the request body
   has to be a well-balanced region of an XML document, also known as an
   XML fragment body in The XML Fragment Interchange [23] specification,
   including only a single element.  If it is not, the server MUST
   reject the request with a 409 response code.  That response SHOULD
   include a detailed conflict report including the 
   element.  If the fragment body is well-balanced but contains



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   characters outside of the UTF-8 character set, the server MUST reject
   the request with a 409 response code.  That response SHOULD include a
   detailed conflict report including the  element.  If the
   MIME type in the Content-Type header field of the request is not
   equal to "application/xcap-el+xml", the server MUST reject the
   request with a 415.

   If the PUT request is for an attribute, the content of the request
   body has to be a sequence of characters that comply with the grammar
   for AttValue as defined above.  If it is not, the server MUST reject
   the request with a 409 response code.  That response SHOULD include a
   detailed conflict report including the  element.
   If the attribute value is valid but contains characters outside of
   the UTF-8 character set, the server MUST reject the request with a
   409 response code.  That response SHOULD include a detailed conflict
   report including the  element.If the MIME type in the
   Content-Type header field of the request is not equal to
   "application/xcap-att+xml", the server MUST reject the request with a
   415.

8.2.3.  Creation

   The steps in this sub-section are followed if the PUT request will
   result in the creation of a new document, element, or attribute.

   If the PUT request is for a document, the content of the request body
   is placed into the directory, and its filename is associated with the
   target node, which is a document.

   If the PUT request is for an element, the server inserts the content
   of the request body as a new child element of the parent element
   selected in Section 8.2.1.  The insertion is done such that the
   request URI, when evaluated, would now point to the element that was
   inserted.  There exist three possible ways in which new elements are
   positioned.

   First, if there were no other sibling elements with the same expanded
   name, and the insertion is not positionally constrained, the new
   element is inserted such that it is the last element amongst all
   element siblings.  Furthermore, if there were comment, text, or
   processing instruction nodes after the former last element, they MUST
   occur prior to the insertion of the new element.  This case occurs
   when one of the following are true:

   o  The element name in the target selector is not wildcarded.  There
      could be an attribute selector (in which case, it would have to
      match an attribute of the element being inserted), and the
      position in the target selector will either be absent or have a



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      value of 1 (a value greater than 1 would always result in
      rejection of the request, since this is the first element with the
      given name underneath the parent).

   o  The element name in the target selector is wildcarded, but there
      are no other elements underneath the same parent.  There could be
      an attribute selector (in which case, it would have to match an
      attribute of the element being inserted), and the position in the
      target selector will either be absent or have a value of 1 (a
      value greater than 1 would always result in rejection of the
      request, since this is the first element underneath the parent).

   o  The element name in the target selector is wildcarded, and there
      are other elements underneath the same parent.  However, there is
      an attribute selector that matches none of the attributes in the
      other sibling elements underneath the parent, but does match an
      attribute of the element to be inserted.  The position in the
      target selector is absent.

   Secondly, if there were sibling elements with the same name already
   in the document, but the insertion is positionally unconstrained, the
   server MUST insert the element such that it is in the "earliest last"
   position.  "Earliest last" means that the new element MUST be
   inserted so that there are no elements after it with the same
   expanded name, and for all insertion positions where this is true, it
   is inserted such that as many sibling nodes (element, comment, text,
   or processing instruction) appear after it as possible.  This case
   occurs when the target selector is defined by a by-name or by-attr
   production, and there is no position indicated.

   Lastly, if the element is positionally constrained, the server MUST
   insert the element so that it is in the "earliest nth" position.
   When n>1 and NameofAny is not a wildcard, the element MUST be
   inserted so that there are n-1 sibling elements before it with the
   same expanded name.  If there are not n-1 sibling elements with the
   same expanded name, the request will fail.  When n>1 and NameorAny is
   a wildcard, the element MUST be inserted so that there are n-1
   sibling elements before it, each of which can have any expanded name.
   If there are not n-1 sibling elements in the document, the request
   will fail.  In both of these cases, the new element is inserted such
   that as many sibling nodes appear after it as possible.  When n=1 and

   NameorAny is not a wildcard, the insertion is positionally
   constrained when an element with the same expanded name already
   appears as a child of the same parent.  In this case, the new element
   MUST appear just before the existing first element with this same
   expanded name.  When n=1 and NameorAny is wildcarded, the insertion
   is positionally constrained when there is also an attribute selector



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   that didn't match the first sibling of the parent (if it did match,
   or was absent, this wouldn't have been an insertion).  In this case,
   the new element MUST appear just before all existing elements,
   regardless of their expanded name.

   In practice, this insertion logic keeps elements with the same
   expanded names closely together.  This simplifies the application
   logic when the content model is described by XML schema with
    rules and maxOccurs="unbounded" cardinalities, like:

   
     
       
         
         
       
     
   

   Based on this schema, the document contains some number of 
   elements followed by some number of  elements.  Either  or
    elements may easily be added without wildcards and positional
   constraints.  Note that if "minOccurs" cardinality of  element
   were zero and  elements do not yet exist, a positional predicate
   with the * wildcard must be used.

   The whole insert logic is best described by complete examples.
   Consider the following document:

   
   
    
    
    
    
   

   A PUT request whose content is  and whose node
   selector is root/el1[@att="third"] would result in the following
   document:

   
   
    
    
    
    
   



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   Notice how it has been inserted as the third  element in the
   document, and just before the comment and whitespace nodes.  It would
   have been inserted in exactly the same place if the node selector had
   been root/el1[3][@att="third"] or root/*[3][@att="third"].

   If the content of the request had been  and the
   node selector was root/el3, it would result in the following
   document:

   
   
    
    
    
    
   

   A PUT request whose content is  and whose node selector
   is root/el2[@att="2"] would result in the following document:

   
   
    
    
    
    
   

   It would have been inserted in exactly the same place if the node
   selector had been root/el2[2][@att="2"].  However, a selector root/
   *[2][@att="2"] would result in the following document:

   
   
    
    
    
    
   












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   Lastly, if the node selector had been root/el2[1][@att="2"] the
   result would be:

   
   
    
    
    
    
   

   It is possible that the element cannot be inserted such that the
   request URI, when evaluated, returns the content provided in the
   request.  Such a request is not allowed for PUT.  This happens when
   the element in the body is not described by the expression in the
   target selector.  An example of this case is described in
   Section 7.4.  If this happens, the server MUST NOT perform the
   insertion, and MUST reject the request with a 409 response.  The body
   of the response SHOULD contain a detailed conflict report containing
   the  element.  It is important to note that schema
   compliance does not play a role while performing the insertion.  That
   is, the decision of where the element gets inserted is dictated
   entirely by the structure of the request-URI, the current document,
   and the rules in this specification.

   If the element being inserted (or any of its children) contain
   namespace declarations, those declarations are retained when the
   element is inserted, even if those same declarations exist in a
   parent element after insertion.  The XCAP server MUST NOT remove
   redundant namespace declarations or otherwise change the namespace
   declarations that were present in the element being inserted.

   If the PUT request is for an attribute, the server inserts the
   content of the request body as the value of the attribute.  The name
   of the attribute is equal to the att-name from the attribute-selector
   in the target selector.

   Assuming that the insertion can be accomplished, the server verifies
   that the insertion results in a document that meets the constraints
   of the application usage.  This is discussed in Section 8.2.5.

8.2.4.  Replacement

   The steps in this sub-section are followed if the PUT request will
   result in the replacement of a document, element, or attribute with
   the contents of the request.





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   If the PUT request is for a document, the content of the request body
   is placed into the directory, replacing the document with the same
   filename.

   If the PUT request is for an element, the server replaces the target
   node with the content of the request body.  As in the creation case,
   it is possible that, after replacement, the request URI does not
   select the element that was just inserted.  If this happens, the
   server MUST NOT perform the replacement, and MUST reject the request
   with a 409 response.  The body of the response SHOULD contain a
   detailed conflict report containing the  element.

   As with creation, replacement of an element does not result in the
   changing or elimination of namespace declarations within the newly
   modified element.

   If the PUT request is for an attribute, the server sets the value of
   the selected attribute to the content of the request body.  It is
   possible in the replacement case (but not in the creation case),
   that, after replacement of the attribute, the request URI no longer
   selects the attribute that was just replaced.  The scenario in which
   this can happen is discussed in Section 7.7.  If this is the case,
   the server MUST NOT perform the replacement, and MUST reject the
   request with a 409 response.  The body of the response SHOULD contain
   a detailed conflict report containing the  element.

8.2.5.  Validation

   Once the document, element, or attribute has been tentatively
   inserted, the server needs to verify that the resulting document
   meets the data constraints outlined by the application usage.

   First, the server checks that the final document is compliant with
   the schema.  If it is not, the server MUST NOT perform the insertion.
   It MUST reject the request with a 409 response.  That response SHOULD
   contain a detailed conflict report containing the  element.  If a schema allows for elements or attributes from
   other namespaces, and the new document contains elements or
   attributes from an unknown namespace, the server MUST allow the
   change.  In other words, it is not necessary for an XCAP server to
   understand the namespaces and corresponding schemas for elements and
   attributes within a document, as long as the schema itself allows for
   such elements or attributes to be included.  Of course, such unknown
   namespaces would not be advertised by the server in its XCAP
   capabilities document, discussed in Section 12.

   If the final document contains elements or attributes from a
   namespace that the server does understand (and has consequently



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   advertised in its XCAP capabilities document), but the server does
   not have the schema for that particular element or attribute, the
   server MUST reject the request with a 409 response.  That response
   SHOULD contain a detailed conflict report containing the  element.

   Next, the server checks for any uniqueness constraints identified by
   the application usage.  If the application usage required that a
   particular element or attribute had a unique value within a specific
   scope, the server would check that this uniqueness property still
   exists.  If the application usage required that a URI within the
   document was unique within the domain, the server checks whether it
   is the case.  If any of these uniqueness constraints are not met, the
   server MUST NOT perform the insertion.  It MUST reject the request
   with a 409 response.  That response SHOULD contain a detailed
   conflict report containing the  element.  That
   element can contain suggested values that the client can use to
   retry.  These SHOULD be values that, at the time the server generates
   the 409, would meet the uniqueness constraints.

   The server also checks for URI constraints and other non-schema data
   constraints.  If the document fails one of these constraints, the
   server MUST NOT perform the insertion.  It MUST reject the request
   with a 409 response.  That response SHOULD contain a detailed
   conflict report containing the  element.  That
   element indicates that the document failed non-schema data
   constraints explicitly called out by the application usage.

   Element or attribute removals have similar constraints.  The server
   checks the document for schema validity and compliance to constraints
   defined by the application usage, and rejects the request as
   described above, if either check fails.

8.2.6.  Conditional Processing

   A PUT request for an XCAP resource, like any other HTTP resource, can
   be made conditional through usage of the If-Match and If-None-Match
   header fields.  For a replacement, these are processed as defined in
   [6].  For an insertion of an element or attribute, conditional
   operations are permitted.  The entity tag that is used for the
   procedures in [6] is the one for all of the resources within the same
   document as the parent of the element or attribute being inserted.
   One way to think of this is that, logically speaking, upon receipt of
   the PUT request, the XCAP server instantiates the etag for the
   resource referenced by the request, and then applies the processing
   of the request.  Because of this behavior, it is not possible to
   perform a conditional insert on an attribute or element that is
   conditioned on the operation being an insertion and not a



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   replacement.  In other words, a conditional PUT of an element or
   attribute with an If-None-Match: * will always fail.

8.2.7.  Resource Interdependencies

   Because XCAP resources include elements, attributes, and documents,
   each of which has its own HTTP URI, the creation or modification of
   one resource affects the state of many others.  For example,
   insertion of a document creates resources on the server for all of
   the elements and attributes within that document.  After the server
   has performed the insertion associated with the PUT, the server MUST
   create and/or modify those resources affected by that PUT.  The
   structure of the document completely defines the inter-relationship
   between those resources.

   However, the application usage can specify other resource inter-
   dependencies.  The server MUST create or modify the resources
   specified by the application usage.

   If the creation or replacement was successful, and the resource
   interdependencies are resolved, the server returns a 201 Created or
   200 OK, respectively.  Note that a 201 Created is generated for
   creation of new documents, elements, or attributes.  A 200 OK
   response to PUT MUST not contain any content.  Per the
   recommendations of RFC 2616, the 201 can contain a Location header
   field and entity that identify the resource that was created.  An
   entity tag MUST be included in all successful responses to a PUT.

8.3.  GET Handling

   The semantics of GET are as specified in RFC 2616.  This section
   clarifies the specific content to be returned for a particular URI
   that represents an XCAP resource.

   If the request URI contains only a document selector, the server
   returns the document specified by the URI if it exists, else returns
   a 404 response.  The MIME type of the body of the 200 OK response
   MUST be the MIME type defined by that application usage (i.e.,
   "application/resource-lists+xml").

   If the request URI contains a node selector, the server obtains the
   document specified by the document selector, and if it is found,
   evaluates the node-selector within that document.  If no document is
   found, or if the node-selector is a no-match or invalid, the server
   returns a 404 response.  Otherwise, the server returns a 200 OK
   response.  If the node selector identifies an XML element, that
   element is returned in the 200 OK response as an XML fragment body
   containing the selected element.  The server MUST NOT add namespace



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   bindings representing namespaces used by the element or its children,
   but declared in ancestor elements; the client will either know these
   bindings already (since it has a cached copy of the whole document),
   or it can learn them by explicitly querying for the bindings.  The
   MIME type of the response MUST be "application/xcap-el+xml".  If the
   node selector identifies an XML attribute, the value of that
   attribute is returned in the body of the response.  The MIME type of
   the response MUST be "application/xcap-att+xml".  If the node
   selector identifies a set of namespace bindings, the server computes
   the set of namespace bindings in scope for the element (including the
   default) and encodes it using the "application/xcap-ns+xml" format
   defined in Section 10.  That document is then returned in the body of
   the response.

   GET operations can be conditional, and follow the procedures defined
   in [6].

   Note that the GET of a resource that was just PUT might not be octet-
   for-octet equivalent to what was PUT, due to XML normalization and
   equivalency rules.

   A successful response to a GET MUST include an entity tag.

8.4.  DELETE Handling

   The semantics of DELETE are as specified in RFC 2616.  This section
   clarifies the specific content to be deleted for a particular URI
   that represents an XCAP resource.

   If the request URI contained a namespace-selector, the server MUST
   reject the request with a 405 (Method Not Allowed) and MUST include
   an Allow header field including the GET method.

   If the request URI contains only a document selector, the server
   deletes the document specified by the URI if it exists and returns a
   200 OK, else returns a 404 response.

   If the request URI contains a node selector, the server obtains the
   document specified by the document selector, and if it is found,
   evaluates the node-selector within that document.  If no document is
   found, or if the node-selector is a no-match or invalid (note that it
   will be invalid if multiple elements or attributes are selected), the
   server returns a 404 response.  Otherwise, the server removes the
   specified element or attribute from the document and performs the
   validation checks defined in Section 8.2.5.  Note that this deletion
   does not include any white space around the element that was deleted;
   the XCAP server MUST preserve surrounding whitespace.  It is possible
   that, after deletion, the request URI selects another element in the



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   document.  If this happens, the server MUST NOT perform the deletion,
   and MUST reject the request with a 409 response.  The body of the
   response SHOULD contain a detailed conflict report containing the
    element.  If the deletion will cause a failure of one
   of the constraints, the deletion MUST NOT take place.  The server
   follows the procedures in Section 8.2.5 for computing the 409
   response.  If the deletion results in a document that is still valid,
   the server MUST perform the deletion, process the resource
   interdependencies defined by the application usage, and return a 200
   OK response.

   DELETE operations can be conditional, and follow the procedures
   defined in [6].

   Before the server returns the 200 OK response to a DELETE, it MUST
   process the resource interdependencies as defined in Section 8.2.7.
   As long as the document still exists after the delete operation, any
   successful response to DELETE MUST include the entity tag of the
   document.

8.5.  Managing Etags

   An XCAP server MUST maintain entity tags for all resources that it
   maintains.  This specification introduces the additional constraint
   that when one resource within a document (including the document
   itself) changes, that resource is assigned a new etag, and all other
   resources within that document MUST be assigned the same etag value.
   Effectively, there is a single etag for the entire document.  An XCAP
   server MUST include the Etag header field in all 200 or 201 responses
   to PUT, GET, and DELETE, assuming the document itself still exists
   after the operation.  In the case of a DELETE, the entity tag refers
   to the value of the entity tag for the document after the deletion of
   the element or attribute.

   XCAP resources do not introduce new requirements on the strength of
   the entity tags.

   As a result of this constraint, when a client makes a change to an
   element or attribute within a document, the response to that
   operation will convey the entity tag of the resource that was just
   affected.  Since the client knows that this entity tag value is
   shared by all of the other resources in the document, the client can
   make conditional requests against other resources using that entity
   tag.







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9.  Cache Control

   An XCAP resource is a valid HTTP resource, and therefore, it can be
   cached by clients and network caches.  Network caches, however, will
   not be aware of the interdependencies between XCAP resources.  As
   such, a change to an element in a document by a client will
   invalidate other XCAP resources affected by the change.  For
   application usages containing data that is likely to be dynamic or
   written by clients, servers SHOULD indicate a no-cache directive.

10.  Namespace Binding Format

   A node-selector can identify a set of namespace bindings that are in
   scope for a particular element.  In order to convey these bindings in
   a GET response, a way is needed to encode them.

   Encoding is trivially done by including a single XML element in an
   XML fragment body.  This element has the same local-name as the
   element whose namespace bindings are desired, and also the same
   namespace-prefix.  The element has an xmlns attribute identifying the
   default namespace in scope, and an xmlns:prefix declaration for each
   prefix that is in scope.

   For example, consider the XML document in Section 6.4.  The node-
   selector df:foo/df2:bar/df2:baz/namespace::* will select the
   namespaces in scope for the  element in the document, assuming
   the request is accompanied by a query component that contains
   xmlns(df=urn:test:default-namespace) and
   xmlns(df2=urn:test:namespace1-uri).  A GET containing this node
   selector and namespace bindings will produce the following result:

   

   It is important to note that the client does not need to know the
   actual namespace bindings in order to construct the URI.  It does
   need to know the namespace URI for each element in the node-selector.
   The namespace bindings present in the query component are defined by
   the client, mapping those URIs to a set of prefixes.  The bindings
   returned by the server are the actual bindings used in the document.

11.  Detailed Conflict Reports

   In cases where the server returns a 409 error response, that response
   will usually include a document in the body of the response which
   provides further details on the nature of the error.  This document
   is an XML document, formatted according to the schema of




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   Section 11.2.  Its MIME type, registered by this specification, is
   "application/xcap-error+xml".

11.1.  Document Structure

   The document structure is simple.  It contains the root element
   .  The content of this element is a specific error
   condition.  Each error condition is represented by a different
   element.  This allows for different error conditions to provide
   different data about the nature of the error.  All error elements
   support a "phrase" attribute, which can contain text meant for
   rendering to a human user.

   The following error elements are defined by this specification:

   :  This indicates that the body of the request was
      not a well-formed XML document.

   :  This indicates that the request was supposed to
      contain a valid XML fragment body, but did not.  Most likely this
      is because the XML in the body was malformed or not balanced.

   :  This indicates that an attempt to insert a document,
      element, or attribute failed because the directory, document, or
      element into which the insertion was supposed to occur does not
      exist.  This error element can contain an optional 
      element, which provides an HTTP URI that represents the closest
      parent that would be a valid point of insertion.  This HTTP URI
      MAY be a relative URI, relative to the document itself.  Because
      this is a valid HTTP URI, its node selector component MUST be
      percent-encoded.

   :  This element indicates that the document
      was not compliant to the schema after the requested operation was
      performed.

   :  This indicates that the request was supposed to
      contain a valid XML attribute value, but did not.

   :  This indicates that the requested PUT operation
      could not be performed because a GET of that resource after the
      PUT would not yield the content of the PUT request.

   :  This indicates that the requested DELETE operation
      could not be performed because it would not be idempotent.






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   :  This indicates that the requested operation
      would result in a document that did not meet a uniqueness
      constraint defined by the application usage.  For each URI,
      element, or attribute specified by the client that is not unique,
      an  element is present as the content of the error
      element.  Each  element has a "field" attribute that
      contains a relative URI identifying the XML element or attribute
      whose value needs to be unique, but wasn't.  The relative URI is
      relative to the document itself, and will therefore start with the
      root element.  The query component of the URI MUST be present if
      the node selector portion of the URI contains namespace prefixes.
      Since the "field" node selector is a valid HTTP URI, it MUST be
      percent-encoded.  The  element can optionally contain a
      list of  elements.  Each one is a suggested alternate
      value that does not currently exist on the server.

   :  This indicates that the requested operation
      would result in a document that failed a data constraint defined
      by the application usage, but not enforced by the schema or a
      uniqueness constraint.

   :  This indicates an error condition that is defined by an
      extension to XCAP.  Clients that do not understand the content of
      the extension element MUST discard the xcap-error document and
      treat the error as an unqualified 409.

   :  This indicates that the request could not be completed
      because it would have produced a document not encoded in UTF-8.

   As an example, the following document indicates that the user
   attempted to create an RLS service using the URI
   sip:friends@example.com, but that URI already exists:

   
   
    
     
       sip:mybuddies@example.com
     
    
   










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11.2.  XML Schema

   
   

    
    
     
      Indicates the reason for the error.
     
     
     
      
       
      
     
    

    
     
      
       
      
     
    

    
     
      This element indicates
   that the document was not compliant to the schema after the requested
   operation was performed.
     
     
      
     
    

    
     
      This indicates that the request was supposed to
   contain a valid XML fragment body, but did not.
     



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      This indicates that an attempt to insert
   an element, attribute, or document failed because the document or
   element into which the insertion was
   supposed to occur does not exist.
     
     
      
       
        
         Contains an HTTP URI that points to the
   element that is the closest ancestor that does exist.
         
        
       
      
      
     
    

    
     
      This indicates that the requested
   PUT operation could not be performed because a GET of that resource
   after the PUT would not yield the content of the PUT request.
      
     
     
      
     
    

    
     
      This indicates that the
   request was supposed to contain a valid XML attribute value, but did
   not.
     
     
      
     



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      This indicates that the
   requested operation would result in a document that did not meet a
   uniqueness constraint defined by the application usage.
      
     
     
      
       
        
         For each URI,
   element, or attribute specified by the client that is not unique,
   one of these is present.
        
        
         
          
           
            An optional set of alternate values can be
   provided.
           
          
         
         
        
       
      
      
     
    

    
     
      This indicates that the body of the request was
   not a well-formed document.
     
     
      
     
    





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      This indicates that the
   requested operation would result in a document that failed a data
   constraint defined by the application usage, but not enforced by the
   schema or a uniqueness constraint.
     
     
      
     
    

    
     
      This indicates that the requested DELETE
   operation could not be performed because it would not be
   idempotent.
     
     
      
     
    

    
     
      This indicates that the request could not be
         completed because it would have produced a document not
         encoded in UTF-8.
     
     
      
     
    
   


12.  XCAP Server Capabilities

   XCAP can be extended through the addition of new application usages
   and extensions to the core protocol.  Application usages may define
   MIME types with XML schemas that allow new extension nodes from new
   namespaces.  It will often be necessary for a client to determine
   what extensions, application usages, or namespaces a server supports
   before making a request.  To enable that, this specification defines
   an application usage with the AUID "xcap-caps".  All XCAP servers
   MUST support this application usage.  This usage defines a single




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   document within the global tree that lists the capabilities of the
   server.  Clients can read this well-known document, and therefore
   learn the capabilities of the server.

   The structure of the document is simple.  The root element is .  Its children are , , and .
   Each of these contain a list of AUIDs, extensions, and namespaces
   supported by the server.  Extensions are named by tokens defined by
   the extension, and typically define new selectors.  Namespaces are
   identified by their namespace URI.  To 'support' a namespace, the
   server must have the schemas for all elements within that namespace,
   and be able to validate them if they appear within documents.  Since
   all XCAP servers support the "xcap-caps" AUID, it MUST be listed in
   the  element, and the "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-caps"
   namespace MUST be listed in the  element.

   The following sections provide the information needed to define this
   application usage.

12.1.  Application Unique ID (AUID)

   This specification defines the "xcap-caps" AUID within the IETF tree,
   via the IANA registration in Section 15.

12.2.  XML Schema

   
   
    
     
      Root element for xcap-caps
     
     
      
       
        
         List of supported AUID.
        
        
         
          
         
        
       
       



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         List of supported extensions.
         
        
        
         
          
         
        
       
       
        
         List of supported namespaces.
         
        
        
         
          
         
        
       
       
      
     
    
    
     
      AUID Type
     
     
    
    
     
      Extension Type
     
     
    
    
     
      Namespace type
     
     
    
   






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12.3.  Default Document Namespace

   The default document namespace used in evaluating a URI is
   urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-caps.

12.4.  MIME Type

   Documents conformant to this schema are known by the MIME type
   "application/xcap-caps+xml", registered in Section 15.2.5.

12.5.  Validation Constraints

   There are no additional validation constraints associated with this
   application usage.

12.6.  Data Semantics

   Data semantics are defined above.

12.7.  Naming Conventions

   A server MUST maintain a single instance of the document in the
   global tree, using the filename "index".  There MUST NOT be an
   instance of this document in the user's tree.

12.8.  Resource Interdependencies

   There are no resource interdependencies in this application usage
   beyond those defined by the schema.

12.9.  Authorization Policies

   This application usage does not change the default authorization
   policy defined by XCAP.

13.  Examples

   This section goes through several examples, making use of the
   resource-lists and rls-services [22] XCAP application usages.

   First, a user Bill creates a new document (see Section 7.1).  This
   document is a new resource-list, initially with a single list, called
   friends, with no users in it:

   PUT
   /resource-lists/users/sip:bill@example.com/index HTTP/1.1
   Content-Type:application/resource-lists+xml
   Host: xcap.example.com



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                          Figure 24: New Document

   Next, Bill creates an RLS services document defining a single RLS
   service referencing this list.  This service has a URI of
   sip:myfriends@example.com (URIs are line-folded for readability):

   PUT
   /rls-services/users/sip:bill@example.com/index HTTP/1.1
   Content-Type:application/rls-services+xml
   Host: xcap.example.com

   
   
   
     http://xcap.example.com/resource-lists/users/
   sip:bill@example.com/index/~~/resource-lists/
   list%5b@name=%22friends%22%5d
   
     
      presence
     
    
   

                      Figure 25: RLS Services Example

   Next, Bill creates an element in the resource-lists document
   (Section 7.4).  In particular, he adds an entry to the list:

   PUT
   /resource-lists/users/sip:bill@example.com/index
   /~~/resource-lists/list%5b@name=%22friends%22%5d/entry HTTP/1.1
   Content-Type:application/xcap-el+xml
   Host: xcap.example.com

   
       Bob Jones
     

                    Figure 26: Resource Lists Document





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   Next, Bill fetches the document (Section 7.3):

   GET
   /resource-lists/users/sip:bill@example.com/index HTTP/1.1

                        Figure 27: Fetch Operation

   And the result is (note how white space text nodes appear in the
   document):

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Etag: "wwhha"
   Content-Type: application/resource-lists+xml

   
   
     
     
       Bob Jones
     
   

                        Figure 28: Results of Fetch

   Next, Bill adds another entry to the list, which is another list that
   has three entries.  This is another element creation (Section 7.4):

   PUT
   /resource-lists/users/sip:bill@example.com/index/~~/
   resource-lists/list%5b@name=%22friends%22%5d/
   list%5b@name=%22close-friends%22%5d HTTP/1.1
   Content-Type: application/xcap-el+xml
   Host: xcap.example.com

   
      
        Joe Smith
      
      
        Nancy Gross
      
      
        Petri Aukia
      
   

                        Figure 29: Adding an Entry




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   Then, Bill decides he doesn't want Petri on the list, so he deletes
   the entry (Section 7.5):

   DELETE
   /resource-lists/users/sip:bill@example.com/index/
   ~~/resource-lists/list/list/
   entry%5b@uri=%22sip:petri@example.com%22%5d HTTP/1.1
   Host: xcap.example.com

                       Figure 30: Deleting an Entry

   Bill decides to check on the URI for Nancy, so he fetches a
   particular attribute (Section 7.6):

   GET
   /resource-lists/users/sip:bill@example.com/index/
   ~~/resource-lists/list/list/entry%5b2%5d/@uri HTTP/1.1
   Host: xcap.example.com

                     Figure 31: Fetching an Attribute

   and the server responds:

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Etag: "ad88"
   Content-Type:application/xcap-att+xml

   "sip:nancy@example.com"

                        Figure 32: Results of Fetch

14.  Security Considerations

   Frequently, the data manipulated by XCAP contains sensitive
   information.  To avoid eavesdroppers from seeing this information, it
   is RECOMMENDED that an administrator hand out an HTTPS URI as the
   XCAP root URI.  This will result in TLS-encrypted communications
   between the client and server, preventing any eavesdropping.  Clients
   MUST implement TLS, assuring that such URIs will be usable by the
   client.

   Client and server authentication are also important.  A client needs
   to be sure it is talking to the server it believes it is contacting.
   Otherwise, it may be given false information, which can lead to
   denial-of-service attacks against a client.  To prevent this, a
   client SHOULD attempt to upgrade [15] any connections to TLS.
   Similarly, authorization of read and write operations against the
   data is important, and this requires client authentication.  As a



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   result, a server SHOULD challenge a client using HTTP Digest [11] to
   establish its identity, and this SHOULD be done over a TLS
   connection.  Clients MUST implement digest authentication, assuring
   interoperability with servers that challenge the client.  Servers
   MUST NOT perform basic authentication without a TLS connection to the
   client.

   Because XCAP is a usage of HTTP and not a separate protocol, it runs
   on the same port numbers as HTTP traffic normally does.  This makes
   it difficult to apply port-based filtering rules in firewalls to
   separate the treatment of XCAP traffic from other HTTP traffic.

   However, this problem exists broadly today because HTTP is used to
   access a wide breadth of content, all on the same port, and XCAP
   views application configuration documents as just another type of
   HTTP content.  As such, separate treatment of XCAP traffic from other
   HTTP traffic requires firewalls to examine the URL itself.  There is
   no foolproof way to identify a URL as pointing to an XCAP resource.
   However, the presence of the double tilde (~~) is a strong hint that
   the URL points to an XML element or attribute.  As always, care must
   be taken in looking for the double-tilde due to the breadth of ways
   in which a URI can be encoded on-the-wire [29] [13].

15.  IANA Considerations

   There are several IANA considerations associated with this
   specification.

15.1.  XCAP Application Unique IDs

   Per this specification's instructions, IANA created a new registry
   for XCAP application unique IDs (AUIDs).  This registry is defined as
   a table that contains three columns:

   AUID:  This will be a string provided in the IANA registrations into
      the registry.

   Description:  This is text that is supplied by the IANA registration
      into the registry.

   Reference:  This is a reference to the RFC containing the
      registration.









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   Per this specification's instructions, IANA created this table with
   an initial entry.  The resulting table looks like:

   Application Unique
       ID (AUID)          Description                      Reference
   --------------------   -------------------------------  ---------
   xcap-caps              Capabilities of an XCAP server   RFC 4825

   XCAP AUIDs are registered by the IANA when they are published in
   standards track RFCs.  The IANA Considerations section of the RFC
   must include the following information, which appears in the IANA
   registry along with the RFC number of the publication.

   o  Name of the AUID.  The name MAY be of any length, but SHOULD be no
      more than 20 characters long.  The name MUST consist of alphanum
      and mark [16] characters only.

   o  Descriptive text that describes the application usage.

15.2.  MIME Types

   This specification requests the registration of several new MIME
   types according to the procedures of RFC 4288 [8] and guidelines in
   RFC 3023 [9].

15.2.1.  application/xcap-el+xml MIME Type

   MIME media type name:  application

   MIME subtype name:  xcap-el+xml

   Mandatory parameters:  none

   Optional parameters:  Same as charset parameter application/xml as
      specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Encoding considerations:  Same as encoding considerations of
      application/xml as specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Security considerations:  See Section 10 of RFC 3023 [9].

   Interoperability considerations:  none

   Published specification:  RFC 4825







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   Applications that use this media type:  This document type has been
      used to support transport of XML fragment bodies in RFC 4825, the
      XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP).

   Additional Information:

         Magic Number: none

         File Extension: .xel

         Macintosh file type code: "TEXT"

   Personal and email address for further information:
      Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net

   Intended usage:  COMMON

   Author/Change controller:  The IETF.

15.2.2.  application/xcap-att+xml MIME Type

   MIME media type name:  application

   MIME subtype name:  xcap-att+xml

   Mandatory parameters:  none

   Optional parameters:  Same as charset parameter application/xml as
      specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Encoding considerations:  Same as encoding considerations of
      application/xml as specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Security considerations:  See Section 10 of RFC 3023 [9].

   Interoperability considerations:  none

   Published specification:  RFC 4825

   Applications that use this media type:  This document type has been
      used to support transport of XML attribute values in RFC 4825, the
      XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP).

   Additional Information:

         Magic Number: none

         File Extension: .xav



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         Macintosh file type code: "TEXT"

   Personal and email address for further information:
      Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net

   Intended usage:  COMMON

   Author/Change controller:  The IETF.

15.2.3.  application/xcap-ns+xml MIME Type

   MIME media type name:  application

   MIME subtype name:  xcap-ns+xml

   Mandatory parameters:  none

   Optional parameters:  Same as charset parameter application/xml as
      specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Encoding considerations:  Same as encoding considerations of
      application/xml as specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Security considerations:  See Section 10 of RFC 3023 [9].

   Interoperability considerations:  none

   Published specification:  RFC 4825

   Applications that use this media type:  This document type has been
      used to support transport of XML fragment bodies in RFC 4825, the
      XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP).

   Additional Information:

      Magic Number:  none

      File Extension:  .xns

      Macintosh file type code:  "TEXT"

   Personal and email address for further information:
      Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net

   Intended usage:  COMMON

   Author/Change controller:  The IETF.




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15.2.4.  application/xcap-error+xml MIME Type

   MIME media type name:  application

   MIME subtype name:  xcap-error+xml

   Mandatory parameters:  none

   Optional parameters:  Same as charset parameter application/xml as
      specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Encoding considerations:  Same as encoding considerations of
      application/xml as specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Security considerations:  See Section 10 of RFC 3023 [9].

   Interoperability considerations:  none

   Published specification:  RFC 4825

   Applications that use this media type:  This document type conveys
      error conditions defined in RFC 4825

   Additional Information:

      Magic Number:  none

      File Extension:  .xer

      Macintosh file type code:  "TEXT"

   Personal and email address for further information:
      Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net

   Intended usage:  COMMON

   Author/Change controller:  The IETF.

15.2.5.  application/xcap-caps+xml MIME Type

   MIME media type name:  application

   MIME subtype name:  xcap-caps+xml

   Mandatory parameters:  none

   Optional parameters:  Same as charset parameter application/xml as
      specified in RFC 3023 [9].



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   Encoding considerations:  Same as encoding considerations of
      application/xml as specified in RFC 3023 [9].

   Security considerations:  See Section 10 of RFC 3023 [9].

   Interoperability considerations:  none

   Published specification:  RFC 4825

   Applications that use this media type:  This document type conveys
      capabilities of an XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)
      server, as defined in RFC 4825.

   Additional Information:

      Magic Number:  none

      File Extension:  .xca

      Macintosh file type code:  "TEXT"

   Personal and email address for further information:
      Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net

   Intended usage:  COMMON

   Author/Change controller:  The IETF.

15.3.  URN Sub-Namespace Registrations

   This specification registers several new XML namespaces, as per the
   guidelines in RFC 3688 [17].

15.3.1.  urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-error

   URI:  The URI for this namespace is urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-error

   Registrant Contact:  IETF, SIMPLE working group, (simple@ietf.org),
      Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen@jdrosen.net).












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XML:
           BEGIN
           
           
           
           
             
             XCAP Error Namespace
           
           
             

Namespace for XCAP Error Documents

urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-error

See RFC4825

END 15.3.2. urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-caps URI: The URI for this namespace is urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-caps Registrant Contact: IETF, SIMPLE working group, (simple@ietf.org), Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen@jdrosen.net). XML: BEGIN XCAP Capabilities Namespace

Namespace for XCAP Capability Documents

urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-caps

See RFC4825

END Rosenberg Standards Track [Page 66] RFC 4825 XCAP May 2007 15.4. XML Schema Registrations This section registers two XML schemas per the procedures in [17]. 15.4.1. XCAP Error Schema Registration URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:schema:xcap-error Registrant Contact: IETF, SIMPLE working group, (simple@ietf.org), Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen@jdrosen.net). XML Schema: The XML for this schema can be found as the sole content of Section 11.2. 15.4.2. XCAP Capabilities Schema Registration URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:schema:xcap-caps Registrant Contact: IETF, SIMPLE working group, (simple@ietf.org), Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen@jdrosen.net). XML Schema: The XML for this schema can be found as the sole content of Section 12.2. 16. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Jari Urpalainen, who has contributed many important comments and has assisted with edit passes in the document. The author would also like to thank Ben Campbell, Eva-Maria Leppanen, Hisham Khartabil, Chris Newman, Joel Halpern, Lisa Dusseault, Tim Bray, Pete Cordell, Jeroen van Bemmel, Christian Schmidt, and Spencer Dawkins for their input and comments. A special thanks to Ted Hardie for his input and support. 17. References 17.1. Normative References [1] Maler, E., Yergeau, F., Paoli, J., Bray, T., and C. Sperberg- McQueen, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition)", World Wide Web Consortium FirstEdition REC-xml- 20040204, February 2004, . Rosenberg Standards Track [Page 67] RFC 4825 XCAP May 2007 [2] Thompson, H., Maloney, M., Mendelsohn, N., and D. Beech, "XML Schema Part 1: Structures Second Edition", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xmlschema-1-20041028, October 2004, . [3] Layman, A., Hollander, D., and T. Bray, "Namespaces in XML", World Wide Web Consortium FirstEdition REC-xml-names-19990114, January 1999, . [4] Daniel, R., DeRose, S., Maler, E., and J. Marsh, "XPointer xmlns() Scheme", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC- xptr-xmlns-20030325, March 2003, . [5] Grosso, P., Marsh, J., Maler, E., and N. Walsh, "XPointer Framework", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xptr- framework-20030325, March 2003, . [6] 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. [7] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [8] Freed, N. and J. Klensin, "Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC 4288, December 2005. [9] Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, "XML Media Types", RFC 3023, January 2001. [10] Clark, J. and S. DeRose, "XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xpath- 19991116, November 1999, . [11] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P., Hostetler, J., Lawrence, S., Leach, P., Luotonen, A., and L. Stewart, "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication", RFC 2617, June 1999. [12] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 4234, October 2005. Rosenberg Standards Track [Page 68] RFC 4825 XCAP May 2007 [13] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, January 2005. [14] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000. [15] Khare, R. and S. Lawrence, "Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1", RFC 2817, May 2000. [16] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E. Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002. [17] Mealling, M., "The IETF XML Registry", BCP 81, RFC 3688, January 2004. [18] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003. [19] Boyer, J., "Canonical XML Version 1.0", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xml-c14n-20010315, March 2001, . 17.2. Informative References [20] Rosenberg, J., "A Presence Event Package for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 3856, August 2004. [21] Roach, A., Campbell, B., and J. Rosenberg, "A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event Notification Extension for Resource Lists", RFC 4662, August 2006. [22] Rosenberg, J., "Extensible Markup Language (XML) Formats for Representing Resource Lists", RFC 4826, May 2007. [23] Grosso, P. and D. Veillard, "XML Fragment Interchange", World Wide Web Consortium CR CR-xml-fragment-20010212, February 2001, . [24] Berglund, A., Boag, S., Chamberlin, D., Fernandez, M., Kay, M., Robie, J., and J. Simeon, "XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0", World Wide Web Consortium CR http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xpath20-20051103, November 2005. [25] Newman, C. and J. Myers, "ACAP -- Application Configuration Access Protocol", RFC 2244, November 1997. Rosenberg Standards Track [Page 69] RFC 4825 XCAP May 2007 [26] Day, M., Rosenberg, J., and H. Sugano, "A Model for Presence and Instant Messaging", RFC 2778, February 2000. [27] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434, October 1998. [28] Roach, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-Specific Event Notification", RFC 3265, June 2002. [29] Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, "Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs)", RFC 3987, January 2005. Author's Address Jonathan Rosenberg Cisco Edison, NJ US EMail: jdrosen@cisco.com URI: http://www.jdrosen.net Rosenberg Standards Track [Page 70] RFC 4825 XCAP May 2007 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY, THE IETF TRUST AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Intellectual Property The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org. Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Rosenberg Standards Track [Page 71]

 

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