URI for RESTful Web Services - Part 2

Question

I'm trying to understand how to construct URIs for RESTful web services. Assume I had a dating site, would the following be correct:

• domain.com/profiles/ <-- list of profiles
• domain.com/profiles/123/ <-- profile number 123
• domain.com/profiles/123/likes/ <-- list of profile 123's likes
• domain.com/profiles/123/likes/2/ <-- 2nd item in the list of profile 123's likes

Am I close or did I get this totally wrong?

Answer 1

Looks like you are trying to slip method chaining into here. If you are using a framework, your method may end up looking like this:

 function profiles($pid=0,$likes=0,$which=0){} 

which can be more difficult to program.

when you may really be going for:

 function listProfiles(){}
 function getProfile($profileID){}
 function getLikes($profileID){}
 function getLikeElement($profileID,$int){}

This being said, your implementation is entirely up to you. There is no one standard.

Answer 2

Just think about whether your URLs provide meaningful operations for GET, POST, PUT and DELETE requests. That's what REST is really about, rather than beautiful URLs.