Re: RESTful Toggle

Hi Dong,

Yes, in my application I'm actually more interested in a "blind" toggle like the pull handle of a slot machine.  (Perhaps that would be a better example going forward)

Regarding the POST, I'm still a bit confused as to how this would be constructed.  In my applications, I've tended to use the POST method on "collection" resources to create a new resource that is a member of the collection.  It seems to me if one had a resource /pullHandle and simply used POST with an empty body, that we are really heading down the RPC route rather than being RESTful.  This also overloads the semantics of POST ("POST as create a member" and "POST as ?activate?").  Am I just overthinking here?

Thanks,
Robby

From: "Dong Liu [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [rest-discuss]" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Reply-To: Dong Liu <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014 at 10:59 AM
To: Erik Wilde <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: Rest List <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [rest-discuss] RESTful Toggle



Hi Erik,

I think when a use toggles, s/he must do that based on what s/he sees
or in fact saw. If it is a "blind" toggle then it is like the pull
handle of a slot machine. And I agree with you and Mike for a POST in
that case.

Cheers,

Dong

On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 10:52 AM, Erik Wilde <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> hello dong.
>
>
> On 2014-07-09, 16:46 , Dong Liu wrote:
>>
>> I assume it is like a push button with no up/down or in/out lock.
>
>
> exactly. and as such, the button itself does not have a state. you can
> activate it, and it will toggle stuff. it probably would make a lot of sense
> to make that activation non-idempotent, and i think mike has pointed that
> out already.
>
>
>> Anytime you push it and release, the state switches to the opposite of
>> what you see. Robby was concerned about " both the overhead
>> and latency this entails as well as the potential for a race condition
>> (what if /state changes between the GET and the PUT?)"
>
>
> i don't think PUT is a good model for a toggle service, as there's no state
> to PUT. toggle inherently has race conditions, and if you don't like them,
> then maybe toggle is not a service you should provide. just provide the
> usual GET/PUT on the resource itself, and get rid of the toggle resource.
>
>
> cheers,
>
> dret.
>
> --
> erik wilde | mailto:[email protected] - tel:+1-510-2061079 |
> | UC Berkeley - School of Information (ISchool) |
> | http://dret.net/netdret http://twitter.com/dret |




------------------------------------

------------------------------------


------------------------------------

Yahoo Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    [email protected]

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    [email protected]

<*> Your use of Yahoo Groups is subject to:
    https://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/