REST and subcollections

Question

I have resource collection users and each user can have a filter, so another resource collection is filters.

So, to retrieve filters we have this url

/users/:id/filters

How should be url to retrieve a filter by id?

/users/:id/filters/:id
/filters/:id

Lan · Answer 1 · 2017-05-15T12:14:55.860

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Are the filters first-class entities or owned by a user? For example, can a filter belong to two users or put in another way, is a filter created then assigned to one or more individuals?

If the filters are properties of the users (one filter to one user, one user to one or more filters) /users/:id/filters/:id makes a lot of sense. If the filters are themselves distinct objects that are related to users (one or more users per filter) then either API (perhaps even both) may make sense depending on how the user is expected to consume the API. If they only care about filters, /filter/:id makes sense, if they only care about users' filters /users/:id/filters/:id is appropriate, or if their needs vary between the two, having both is a sensible solution.

edited May 15 '17 at 12:14

answered May 15 '17 at 11:59

Lan

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User can have one and more filters, it can belong only to one user. – Romper May 15 '17 at 12:07
I think most common will be if instead of filters will be products, how will be for products? – Romper May 15 '17 at 12:08

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

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Assign all resources a canonical URI at the root (e.g. /companies/{id} and /employees/{id}).
If a resource cannot exist without another, it should be represented as its sub-resource

The URLs are shorter, easier to remember and not many parameters are required.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/19285843/7527624

https://stackoverflow.com/a/32820784/7527624

edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

Community

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answered May 16 '17 at 14:15

Romper

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 15 '17 at 07:11

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/users/:id/filters/:id makes more sense, as the query is to retrieve a specific filter corresponding to a specific user.

answered May 15 '17 at 07:11

Abie

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What if we will have 3, 4 levels? – Romper May 15 '17 at 07:28
For one or two levels above syntax makes sense. But for more than two, I would suggest you to write a static URL (/users/getFilters) and send rest of the params as JSON – Abie May 15 '17 at 08:18
As JSON, but this is GET, so do you propose to send parameters in body for GET? – Romper May 15 '17 at 09:14
either as body param or using query params in URL itself. – Abie May 15 '17 at 09:58
@Romper - Does this answer your question? – Abie May 15 '17 at 17:28

REST and subcollections

3 Answers3