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REST: Should I redirect to the version URL of an entity?

Answer 1

+1 A:

I think it would be more restful to return a list of the revisions for:

GET /article/4711

You could also have:

GET /article/4711/current

Which returns the current version directly.

Brian R. Bondy 2010-04-02 16:40:55

`/current` sounds like a good idea. I though about using `/article/4711/version` to get a list of all versions (much like a directory index). Does this sound restful to you?

sfussenegger 2010-04-02 16:53:11

Answer 2

+2 A:

Depends on your intended behavior for GET /article/4711. If it is intended to always point to the latest version, then it should return the latest version directly. Redirecting to a particular version seems problematic as you are relying on the user/client library to not visit that particular URL in the future. To translate into HTML terms, a user might bookmark the version/7 URL and be surprised that they are now accessing an older version instead of the up to date version they originally typed into the address bar.

rjh 2010-04-02 16:42:59

I'm not to much concerned about users as the API is XML/JSON only - I know it was only an analogy though ;) I'm not sure if I should consider clients behaving this way. Clients "bookmarking" the location of a temporary redirect are certainly not doing what they are supposed to do.

sfussenegger 2010-04-02 16:46:55

So what's the behavior of an XHTTP client in a redirect like this? I feel a little ignorant even asking this question. I assume the browser is smart enough to transparently do the redirect, but I know IE has surprised me with less desirable behavior than this.

altCognito 2010-04-02 16:50:09

@altCognito that's what I was wondering too (it's "harder' to implement" with dump clients). Does somebody have any experience with this?

sfussenegger 2010-04-02 16:55:24

Answer 3

+11 A:

If you treat versions as entities (which by the looks of it you do) this is what I'd suggest:

GET /article/4711

returns a list of all versions (and links to them). Which makes /article/4711 a container entity.

GET /article/4711/latest

returns contents of the latest version. You might want to consider /version/latest to get in-line with the below.

GET /article/4711/version/7

returns the specific version of the article.

pulegium 2010-04-02 16:47:04

+1 that is much more in line with REST.

rjh 2010-04-02 16:54:00

1) "/latest" in deed sounds nice. 2) I thought about using `/version` for a list of versions (much like a directory index of contained files). 3) why wouldn't you redirect from `/latest` to `/version/7`. Doesn't it make much more sense if both are the exact same thing? Maybe I'm wondering as I have slight SEO background that makes me shy away from "duplicate content" ;)

sfussenegger 2010-04-02 17:00:57

i'm generally against redirects in APIs and judging by your comment in another answer "I'm not to much concerned about users as the API is XML/JSON only" these pages/URLs aren't for humans... :) In APIs generally it's better to avoid complexities such as redirects as some clients may not be that sophisticated/flexible to handle those. If you're still concerned about SEO/google thing, just add the latest/ URL into robots.txt and tell google to ignore it.

pulegium 2010-04-02 17:10:48

Http redirects are how you redirect to latest versions without breaking caching. Most clients implement redirects transparently, and doing it manually is trivial, so wouldnt' recommend against it. It's a great way to provide Hyperlink support to a ReST API.

serialseb 2010-04-08 13:34:54

Answer 4

+1 A:

You might want to look at http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-brown-versioning-link-relations .

Using the CMIS link relations and the HTTP Link header you can make /article/4711 the latest and provide a link to the versions, e.g. Link: </article/4711/versions>;rel=version-history

Jan Algermissen 2010-04-02 19:53:19

+1 interesting link, thanks a lot

sfussenegger 2010-04-03 11:54:38

Answer 5

+1 A:

Chris McCauley 2010-04-06 14:25:10

HATEOS is the way to go in this case.

Brian Clozel 2010-04-08 13:11:19

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REST: Should I redirect to the version URL of an entity?

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