[webkit-gtk] WK2: Adapting the Policy Decision Framework for Geolocation

[Martin Robinson]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 2:26 AM, Mario Sanchez Prada <msanchez at igalia.com> wrote:

>> It's not just an implementation detail, Mario is concerned of exposing a
>> download method in the API for policy decisions where it doesn't make
>> sense to download anything. His approach moves the download method down
>> the hierarchy so that it can only be used with Navigation and Request
>> policy decisions.
>
> Yeah, exactly. For me it's not just an implementation detail, it's more
> about what we want to expose to apps in the public API.

It is true that a 'download' action exists for a new decision type
that it doesn't make sense for. Consider that it already only ever
makes sense for WebkitResponsePolicyDecisions. Take a look at the
documentation in WebKitWebView.h. Right now 'download' is available
for all decisions, because this is the way the C API works.

If you insist that it must only be available for the one decision
type, then why not consider this counter-proposal:

1. Accept my proposal above, without the 'download' method.
2. Add a webkit_response_policy_decision_download method to
WebKitResponsePolicyDecision.

> To be honest, I had already a hard time understanding why this
> download() method was both in WebKitGTK+ [1] and WebKit2GTK+ APIs [2],
> since it sounded strange to me that you could "use" and "ignore" a
> 'policy decision', but also "download" it :-).

The answer to this is simple: being able to 'download' is an important usecase.

> However, I can see also the point of keeping consistency between
> WebKitGTK+ and WebKit2GTK+ APIs, and so that would lean us towards
> keeping the download() method here... but in that case I wonder whether
> it wouldn't be perhaps better to accept that this "policy decision
> framework" is just a wrapper for the internal Policy Clilent, and then
> implement "geolocation permission requests" completely out of this
> framework, as it's done in WebKitGTK+.

Here is where you lose me. It is possible that geolocation requests do
not fit into the policy decision framework, but not because of this
issue. I say this because the issue already existed with
WebKitNavigationPolicyDecision, WebKitNavigationPolicyDecision, the C
API and WebKit1. It's not a new thing. :)

--Martin