Multiple Insert/Update business objects in REST

Question

I have a requirement where I will receive multiple business objects from the client and my service has to insert/update all of them.

Can I implement a REST webservice which will have a POST method and will accept a list of business objects and will update/insert all of them into the system? I have read that we should use a POST method to create a new entry. Can we use POST method for this kind of scenario wherein we can create/update multiple entries at one go?

My other query is, for a POST method, is it RESTful to return a business object instead of returning a RESPONSE object?

Answer 1

REST is about scalability; scalability is about cachability; cachability is about individual resources, not sets of them. A post probably shouldn't return anything other than a possible redirect to a GET that returns the resource just posted. Data should be fetched with a GET, GET's are cachable. POST, PUT, DELETE are actions, not queries, you don't get data with them other than what they may include to point you at some new resource via response headers.

Answer 2

Yes you can use POST to accept a document that will cause the creation of a list of business objects. It is not the most obvious way to do it, but it can be done RESTfully. See my answer to your other question.

A POST can return a document that represents information about a business object. It can't really return a business object directly, because HTTP doesn't return objects, it returns streams of bytes that can be interpreted using the content-type header.