What is the best way to design a RESTful resource for an object with a composite id? For example, suppose I have a GET /people resource for getting a list of person records. A person doesn't have a single id; instead, it is identified by firstName, lastName, and birthdate. How should I design the resource to get a single person?
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jwzirilli
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2By the way, although its very rare, two person with the same name, can have the same bithday. So this is quite a poor choice for a PK. – meskobalazs Jul 07 '15 at 15:15
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1This is a hypothetical example. Please operate under the assumption that firstName, lastName, and birthdate guarantee uniqueness. – jwzirilli Jul 07 '15 at 15:21
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2I agree with @jwzirilli - you should use a mechanism that (almost) guarantees the uniqueness of a person. The social security number f.e. would be such a number for persons. If in your system a combination of `firstName`, `lastName` and `birthday` is guaranteed to create a unique identifier, you could also use a [matrix-parameter](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2048121/url-matrix-parameters-vs-request-parameters): `GET /people;firstName=John;lastName=Smith;birthday=1973-12-01` – Roman Vottner Jul 07 '15 at 15:53
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I would use one of the following variations:
GET /people/John/Smith/1973-12-01
or
GET /people/John,Smith,1973-12-01
meskobalazs
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As already mentioned in the comments, if you don't have a single identifier that ensure uniqueness, you could consider matrix variables:
GET /people;firstname=John;lastname=Smith;birthday=1973-12-01
cassiomolin
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