CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rest
rgullhaug
rgullhaug

Reputation: 1115

REST performing an action

I'm designing a REST API where I need to give the clients the ability to copy resources. Say for example you have the following resource: customer/{customerno}/address

And you will provide the client with functionallity for copying the address to shippingaddress. I could do like this: customer/{customerno}/address/copytoshipping

But then it would be RPC and not REST. What is the correct way to do something like this?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 295

Answers (3)

jayraynet
jayraynet

Reputation: 906

A different approach could be:

  • Expose a resource for "customer address" (as you stated above)

    GET /customer/{number}/address

  • Expose a resource for "customer shipping address" fetch:

    GET /customer/{number}/shipping-address

  • update with actual address:

    PUT /customer/{number}/shipping-address
Content-Type: application/xml  
(xml/json of a single address)

  • update using a URI pointer to another address

    PUT /customer/number/shipping-address HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/atom+xml
(xml/json of an atom:link with href pointer to main address ('/customer/123/address')

Perhaps more complex than you want but puts the copy burden on the server rather than the client.

Upvotes: 1

Donal Fellows
Donal Fellows

Reputation: 137797

Does that have to be in the REST API? The client could just GET the representation of the (billing?) address and PUT it to the shipping address. Yes, you might well hide the details of that in your client-side code (that seems very reasonable to me) but there's no particular reason to clutter the REST interface with special operations to do the copying.

Upvotes: 2

suing
suing

Reputation: 2878

GET the address using Rel="CustomerAddress"

POST using Rel="CustomerShippingAddress" example URL customer/{customerno}/address/shipping

Upvotes: 1

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