Design RESTful service with multiple ids

Posted by Dustin Digmann on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Dustin Digmann
Published on 2012-07-03T02:54:40Z Indexed on 2012/07/03 3:15 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 201

Filed under:

rest

I am designing a RESTful service. It is to list a set of data. The main problem is that the set does not have a reasonable, single identifier. Nor can the specific set be easily calculated within the knowledge of the system. As a result, it does not seem possible to have a GET /items/{identifier} service.

I do have the id of each element being requested. My main issue is that it does not seem RESTful to list the ids in the URI (eg GET items/{id1},{id2},...,{idn} ). Right?

I could see DELETE having a similar use case - remove multiple items in one request cycle.

How would such a use case be satisfied while staying within the REST realm? Is that possible?

Related posts about rest

REST: How to store and reuse REST call queries

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm learning C# by programming a real monstrosity of an application for personal use. Part of my application uses several SPARQL queries like so: const string ArtistByRdfsLabel = @" PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> SELECT… >>> More
REST Framework - MS Web Api vs the rest of the field

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I am a .NET developer who is looking into the OSS world for a REST framework similar to Microsoft's Web Api. I'll be starting a personal project soon and need to develop both a web site and an API with the API coming first. I've ruled out Ruby on Rails just because I feel that with my background… >>> More
Self Hosted WCF REST Service or Hosting WCF REST Service in Console Application

as seen on C# Corner - Search for 'C# Corner'
n this article, I will show you How to create a REST based service, How to host a REST,based service in Console application and How to consume a REST Service at client. >>> More
Trouble determining proper decoding of a REST response from an ArcGIS REST service using IHttpModule

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
First a little background on what I am trying to achieve. I have an application that is utilizing REST services served by ArcGIS Server and IIS7. The REST services return data in one of several different formats. I am requesting a JSON response. I want to be able to modify the response (remove… >>> More
WCF REST on .Net 4.0

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
A simple and straight forward article taken from: http://christopherdeweese.com/blog2/post/drop-the-soap-wcf-rest-and-pretty-uris-in-net-4 Drop the Soap: WCF, REST, and Pretty URIs in .NET 4 Years ago I was working in libraries when the Web 2.0 revolution began. One of the things that caught… >>> More

Developer IT