restful way for deleting a bunch of items

Question

In wiki article for REST

it is indicated that if you use http://example.com/resources DELETE, that means you are deleting the entire collection.

If you use http://example.com/resources/7HOU57Y DELETE, that means you are deleting that element.

I am doing a WEBSITE, note NOT WEB SERVICE.

I have a list that has 1 checkbox for each item on the list. Once i select multiple items for deletion, i will allow users to press a button called DELETE SELECTION. If user presses the button, a js dialog box will popup asking user to confirm the deletion. if user confirms, all the items are deleted.

So how should i cater for deleting multiple items in a RESTFUL way?

NOTE, currently for DELETE in a webpage, what i do is i use FORM tag with POST as action but include a _method with the value DELETE since this is what was indicated by others in SO on how to do RESTful delete for webpage.

Answer 1

One option is to create a delete "transaction". So you POST to something like http://example.com/resources/deletes a new resource consisting of a list of resources to be deleted. Then in your application you just do the delete. When you do the post you should return a location of your created transaction e.g., http://example.com/resources/deletes/DF4XY7. A GET on this could return the status of the transaction (complete or in progress) and/or a list of resources to be deleted.

Answer 2

I would say DELETE http://example.com/resources/id1,id2,id3,id4 or DELETE http://example.com/resources/id1+id2+id3+id4. As "REST is an architecture (...) [not] protocol" to quote this wikipedia article there is, I belive, no single one way of doing this.

I am aware that above is not possible without JS with HTML but I get the feeling that REST was:

• Created without thinking of minor details like transactions. Who would need to operate on more then single item? This is somehow justified in HTTP protocol as it was not intended to serve through it anything else other then static webpages.
• Not necessary well adjusting into current models - even of pure HTML.

Answer 3

As there is no 'proper' way to do this, what I have done in the past is:

send DELETE to http://example.com/something with xml or json encoded data in the body.

when you receive the request, check for DELETE, if true, then read the body for the ones to be deleted.

Answer 4

I think rojoca's answer is the best so far. A slight variation might be, to do away with the javascript confirm on the same page, and in stead, create the selection and redirect to it, showing a confirm message on that page. In other words:

From:
http://example.com/resources/

do a

POST with a selection of the ID's to:
http://example.com/resources/selections

which, if successful, should respond with:

HTTP/1.1 201 created, and a Location header to:
http://example.com/resources/selections/DF4XY7

On this page you will then see a (javascript) confirm box, which if you confirm will do a request of:

DELETE http://example.com/resources/selections/DF4XY7

which, if successful, should respond with: HTTP/1.1 200 Ok (or whatever is appropriate for a successful delete)

Answer 5

I am trying to perform a batch PUT using the following code. But I am getting a ClientHandlerException. Can anyone let me know how to use the Collection URI mentioned in wiki article for REST Server end code:

@PUT
    //@Path("{id}")
    @Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)
    public List<Person> updatePerson( 
        final List<Person> person) throws RequestMediaTypeException, 
        RequestSemanticException, RequestSyntaxException, 
        ResourceConcurrencyException, ResourceGoneException, 
        ResourceNotFoundException, ResponseMediaTypeException,
        ResourceInternalServerException {
        return personResource.updatePerson(person);
    }

Client end code:

public static void main(String[] args) {
        String url = "http://localhost:8080/my-restful-ws/person";
        WebResource res = Client.create().resource(url);

        List<Person> personList = new ArrayList<Person>();
        Person customer = new Person();
        customer.setGuid("0");
        customer.setFirstName("Me");
        customer.setLastName("My");
        customer.setCreated(new Date());
        Person customer2 = new Person();
        customer2.setGuid("1");
        customer2.setFirstName("I");
        customer2.setLastName("IAM");
        customer2.setCreated(new Date());
        personList.add(customer);
        personList.add(customer2);


        ClientResponse putresponse = res.type("application/xml").put(ClientResponse.class, personList);
        System.out.println(putresponse);
    }

Response: Getting a client handler exception.Caused by: com.sun.jersey.api.client.ClientHandlerException: A message body writer for Java type, class java.util.ArrayList, and MIME media type, application/xml, was not found