Subject: [Tools-discuss] IETF xml2rfc online tool transform as a GET query

From: Hadriel Kaplan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2015 08:24:41 -0400

Howdy,
You have a very useful online tool to convert XML to RFC format online
at xml2rfc.ietf.org, which makes it easy to view the XML source in the
various formats without installing the xml2rfc tool and all. Thank you
for providing the online means of doing that!

What I'd like to ask is if it would be possible to provide a way to
use that tool through an HTTP GET URI request, instead of the current
forms-based input mode which requires a POST with multipart form data.
In other words, instead of having to go on the site and clicking
through the buttons and pasting a URL for the source and clicking
"Submit", instead could we use a specially-formatted URL/URI link to
do the same thing.

For example, a URI like this:

http://xml2rfc.ietf.org/transform?url=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fpcapng%2Fpcapng%2Fmaster%2Fdraft-tuexen-opsawg-pcapng.xml&mode=html&format=ascii&type=ascii

That's virtually identical to the form data in the current web page,
except it would use a GET request and does not include the "Submit"
action.

This would only work for converting XML from URLs, not by uploading a
file, obviously.

The reason for this request is so that we can put that as an HTTP URL
link in emails, docs, etc. Web browsers can dereference that URL link
and immediately show the results, without having to clik on the
submission form. For my particular use-case, it would allow me to keep
an IETF draft on github and put the URL link in a README markdown page
there, which github will render, and then users can click the link and
be sent to the transformed page on xml2rfc.ietf.org.

-hadriel