Re: URI design, part 2

On Nov 30, 2012, at 7:08 PM, Nicholas Shanks <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 30 Nov 2012, at 13:15, Max Toro wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for your answers, it's pretty much what I had in mind.
>> 
>> I want to discuss a second example:
>> 
>> a)
>> POST /orders/1/cancel
>> 
>> vs.
>> 
>> b)
>> PATCH /orders/1
>> 
>> canceled=true
>> 
>> 
>> Does REST say anything in favor or against these two designs?
> 
> REST says "Do 'b', never 'a'." Sorry!

Yes, right.

If it suits your use cases, consider:

DELETE /orders/1

Which might well result in the order being moved to a cancled-orders collection. IOW, it need not be erased entirely.

Jan





> The simple rule is URIs are for nouns, HTTP methods are for verbs.
> 
> You could get away with this though:
> 
> POST /orders/1
> cancelled=true
> 
> Originally, POST was intended to mean "post a reply" the same as it's NNTP namesake/predecessor. Now, though, the authors of HTTP concede that it's modern meaning is "Hey, server, use these data (request body) to perform some action to this resource (uri)"
> 
> As such, by POSTing to /orders/1 you are at least getting the resource part of the API right, even if you are lacking the semantics of a PATCH request.
> 
>> Personally, I would never do 'b' because it's simply hard to implement
>> with the tools I use. Also, isn't it a case of tunneling? 'Cancel' is
>> an action that does more than simply update a resource.
> 
> 
> I wouldn't call it tunnelling, tunnelling would be something like:
> 
> POST /orders/1
> 
> _method_override="DELETE"    // could also be custom HTTP header
> 
> If the "cancel" action is just updating a resource state, rather then, say, DELETEing the resource, then you could even do something like:
> 
> PUT /orders/1/cancelled
> true
> 
> (again, use POST if you can't PUT)
> 
> and correspondingly:
> 
> GET /orders/1/cancelled
> 
> => "true"
> 
> GET /orders/2/cancelled
> 
> => "false"
> 
> (or 1/0, yes/no, … however you wish to represent it)
> 
> 
> For reference, stackoverflow.com is a good place to go with these sorts of questions. Many have already been asked in various forms, you'll find the answers already provided.
> 
> — Nicholas.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 



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