DID = Base IRI?

[peacekeeper]

DID Resolution returns a DID Document, which is JSON-LD. While parsing JSON-LD, we could specify that the Base IRI is set to the original DID that is being resolved. This would enable easy use of relative IRIs in the DID Document.

[mwherman2000]

IRI? ...it's not defined in the current spec.

[peacekeeper]

Internationalized Resource Identifier (= internationalized version of URI), see https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3987

[peacekeeper]

While parsing JSON-LD, we could specify that the Base IRI is set to the original DID that is being resolved.

A slightly different and perhaps better idea is that the Base IRI is set to the value of the id property of the DID Document. See comment here https://github.com/w3c-ccg/did-spec/issues/97#issuecomment-511684511.

[talltree]

@peacekeeper I like that last idea. However I'm wondering if we can't skip IRI and just use URI, i.e., RFC 3986, since the syntax of DIDs is so restricted anyway (on purpose—to avoid some of the very complex string matching rules involved with IRIs vs. URIs). Thoughts?

[peacekeeper]

@talltree Hmm "Base IRI" is the term used by the JSON-LD spec, so I thought we'd stick with that..?

[talltree]

@peacekeeper While I understand that, I believe the DID spec should specify DID syntax is restricted to RFC 3986 URI syntax (not RFC 3987 IRI syntax) because:

• DIDs are not intended to be human-friendly identifiers so we don't need the features of IRIs
• URIs are easier than IRIs to do string comparisons on to determine equivalence
• We have already tightly restricted the syntax of DIDs to make comparison (and human transcription) easier and avoid homonym attacks.

Make sense?

[peacekeeper]

I think that's fine.. Since URIs are also IRIs that would still be compatible with JSON-LD.

[peacekeeper]

This is being discussed in https://github.com/w3c/did-core/pull/408.

[peacekeeper]

Also see discussion in https://github.com/w3c/did-core/issues/432.