Extend the WoT API with provisioning and discovery introduction/exploration
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Description
Based on the comment in https://github.com/w3c/wot-scripting-api/issues/545#issuecomment-2220314305, this issue discusses a proposal to handle multi-solution support, provisioning and discovery mechanisms.
The algorithm drafted here looks more like an internal implementation detail. It is hard to standardize it in order to expose these details to scripts. Or, in other words, it's hard to distillate simple APIs that cover the programmatic side of discovery, without going too much into protocol details -- since then a script could just use the network/REST API.
I am thinking if we could make examples on how to fetch TD directories using the Discovery spec / network API, as depicted here. Those will help figuring out if we can distillate a good programmatic API on top of that.
Currently the WoT Discovery introduction mechanisms are definitely encapsulated in the Scripting implementation.
Moreover, the Authentication layer and the Exploration layer, too, are encapsulated. The Scripting API presents another (programmatic) exploration API that connects to the middleman (the Scripting implementation), provisioned as an endpoint in the given WoT solution, and maybe represented (in the future) as an internal slot to the implementation (to the WoT API object). True, we are missing a standard provisioning API, but more about this later.
Since currently we are not co-hosting multiple solutions in a single WoT runtime (Scripting implementation, i.e. WoT API object), this works quite well, separating the complexities of the underlying WoT Discovery spec.
We can specify a separate API for implementing the details of the WoT Discovery spec, and that should be in a different conformance class, with its own Security section, same level as WoT Provisioning. In my view, these belong to the next level down in the stack. If we were to standardize these (Provisioning, Discovery introduction + exploration), I would support it, but eventually in a separate deliverable (spec, impl + tests) in the WG.
If we were to co-host and support multiple WoT/IoT solutions with a single runtime and WoT object and API, then it needs to be transparent from identification/authentication point of view as well, therefore pulling the need for more low level configuration functions -- therefore going one level down as mentioned above.
Another way to do that is to expose multiple WoT objects for multiple solutions, i.e. we need an additional root-level API to create (async) a WoT API object, with the given provisioning/initialization routines, including discovery introduction and exploration, resulting in a configured discovery "middleman" internal slot. We could use the WoT object which exposes the current API functionality the same way as now, making this proposal backwards compatible, but also (re)configurable wrt provisioning, discovery etc.
I can draft an experimental API for this in a separate issue.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Read the linked comment in issue 545 and the WoT Discovery overview cited there, then compare them with the current Scripting API approach described here. Explore whether examples for fetching TD directories or a separate experimental API should be drafted. Done requires an agreed proposal and scope for provisioning, discovery, and multi-solution support.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- api, backend-api-design
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 20/100