Does my API design violate RESTful principles?
- by peta
Hello everybody,
I'm currently (I try to) designing a RESTful API for a social network. But I'm not sure if my current approach does still accord to the RESTful principles. I'd be glad if some brighter heads could give me some tips.
Suppose the following URI represents the name field of a user account:
people/{UserID}/profile/fields/name
But there are almost hundred possible fields. So I want the client to create its own field views or use predefined ones. Let's suppose that the following URI represents a predefined field view that includes the fields "name", "age", "gender":
utils/views/field-views/myFieldView
And because field views are kind of higher logic I don't want to mix support for field views into the "people/{UserID}/profile/fields" resource. Instead I want to do the following:
utils/views/field-views/myFieldView/{UserID}
Though Leonard Richardson & Sam Ruby state in their book "RESTful Web Services" that a RESTful design is somehow like an "extreme object oriented" approach, I think that my approach is object oriented and therefore accords to RESTful principles. Or am I wrong?
When not: Are such "object oriented" approaches generally encouraged when used with care and in order to avoid query-based REST-RPC hybrids?
Thanks for your feedback in advance,
peta
