REST API: Sorting, wish-list

Sorting
-------

I noticed that we don't have sorting in the API. Similar to the
@sort/@group syntax in the index urls I'd suggest a @sort property that
gets a list of properties (similar to @fields) but with an optional
prepended '-' to the property indicating reverse-sorting by that
property?
Example:
@sort=creator,-creation
would give us a list of issues sorted by creator and creation date,
earlier dates last (reverse-sorted by creation date).

Security
--------

I also noticed that the security checks for attributes seem to (always?)
check the whole class, not individual properties. I think I can come up
with a patch to fix this.

Limit
-----

Then I'd like to have a '@limit=number' (similar to SQL limit) clause
that can limit the number of results returned (don't we already have
something like this?). The idea is to return the biggest or smallest
item (think dates) of something. So @sort + @limit=1 would get me this.
Note that it would be a lot faster if this is handed down to SQL.

Substring search
----------------

Currently strings do a substring-search. For an exact match we would
have to extend the 'filter' method of the database. This is (at least
for me) probably quite easy to do.

How would we change the syntax of the REST queries?
I'd suggest we change the semantics to do an exact match for
property=string searches, that leave us with the question how substring
search should be expressed.

Ralf
-- 
Dr. Ralf Schlatterbeck                  Tel:   +43/2243/26465-16
Open Source Consulting                  www:   http://www.runtux.com
Reichergasse 131, A-3411 Weidling       email: [email protected]