> On 17 May 2019, at 12:15, Sven Van Caekenberghe <s...@stfx.eu> wrote:
>
>> As a related question - how would I know to use #addPart: vs: #formAt: ?
>
> By knowing/understanding a bit more about HTTP ? ;-)
As I wrote in my reply to Ben:
Although curl is powerful, well known and well supported, I would not say it is
a great standard for interface design, it is way too complex.
Zn tries to approach HTTP from an object design standpoint. You pass along a
ZnMultiPartFormDataEntity object that contains ZnMimeParts as entity to your
POST request.
HTTP transfers resources or entities between a client and a server using a
limited set of verbs (ZnMessage subclasses ZnRequest and ZnResponse). Headers
(ZnHeaders) contain meta data about HTTP messages.
Simplified, with a GET you request a resource, with a DELETE you remove a
resource, with POST you create a new resource and with PUT/PATCH you update an
existing resource.
Resources/entities can be anything, they are described by mime types
(ZnMimeType) and identified by URLs/URIs (ZnUrl).
Zn models them as subclasses of ZnEntity. The most fundamental ones are
ZnStringEntity for text based data and ZnByteArrayEntity for binary data.
ZnStreamEntity is a special variant that support streaming transfers.
From the world of HTML (not HTTP !), more specifically, Forms, there are 2
popular resources/entities: ZnApplicationFormUrlEncodedEntity and
ZnMultiPartFormDataEntity. These have structure that is also exposed as an API
- and for which there is some extra support in ZnClient.
Most real REST APIs use JSON or XML for their payloads (see the #forJsonREST
method for example).
HTH,
Sven
