ansaurus

Question

How should a REST URL schema look like for a tree hierarchy?

Answer 1

A:

Since products may be in several stores or several shelves (categories?), I'd have each product have a unique number regardless of its position in the hierarchy. Then use the flat product number. That makes the API more stable when some products are for instance moved in your store.

In short, don't add unneeded redundancy to your API. To get a shelve list a store ID is enough, for a product list a shelve ID is enough... etc.

Lucero 2010-01-27 20:59:55

Answer 2

A:

it seems like you are trying to build many different use cases, but everything is getting built into one super service. It would be better to break it out.

http://server/product_info/123123 or http://server/product_info?product=123123
http://server/product_inventory?store=123&amp;shelf=345
then you can also support:
http://server/product_inventory?store=123

then PUT and DELETE makes sense for changing inventory or adding a new product.

mlathe 2010-01-27 21:23:25

What about in the case of a POST? For example, if I'm adding a new product to a shelf, I wouldn't want to do something like `POST http://server/product_info/123?shelf=456`.

Daniel T. 2010-01-27 22:13:35

Answer 3

A:

Don't design a REST api based on an URL structure. Here is how I think you should go about designing a REST api.

Trying to define a REST interface without discussing what links will be contained in what resources is like discussing an RPC interface and ignoring parameters and return values.

Darrel Miller 2010-01-27 22:19:53

Thanks for the link. We're only using a web service to allow an iPhone to download and upload data to a server (all internal), so it looks like what we want is RPC instead of REST (discoverability is not a concern).

Daniel T. 2010-01-27 22:59:25

This is absolutely correct.

Wahnfrieden 2010-01-27 23:00:33

Daniel T: there are still advantages to using REST. It will make your client more flexible to changes on the server. Then your server can manage its URI space however it likes without breaking clients.

Wahnfrieden 2010-01-27 23:01:43

For this application, we're only interested in sending data back and forth betwen an iPhone and server, both of which are only used internally. The cost of constructing objects that contain URL links and summaries, and implementing a way to parse this data on the iPhone, is more costly than saying "Here's the API, grab data like this".

Daniel T. 2010-01-27 23:23:26

As long as you accept that you have to update and re-deploy all your clients whenever you update your server in a way that changes its URI space, then RPC is fine here. No need to over-architect things after all. However, please do not erroneously refer to it as REST then, since too many people already misappropriate the term and it's become quite confusing.

Wahnfrieden 2010-01-28 00:06:48

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

How should a REST URL schema look like for a tree hierarchy?

related questions