CODEWITHSUNDEEP
restapi-design
Ivan Aguilar
Ivan Aguilar

Reputation: 616

REST API parameter with multiple value types

I have the API route /api/users/:user_id, which takes a number as a parameter.

I want to have now the same route, but taking the username instead of the id, like this: /api/users/:username.

In my code, I have the route set up as /api/users/:user and I check the user URI parameter and do different actions if it is a number or a string.

Is it good practice / efficient to have the same route, but with a different parameter type? Both the username and user id's are unique.

It works, I just want to know if this is a practical solution, or if I should do separate routes.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1485

Answers (4)

Sumit Ramteke
Sumit Ramteke

Reputation: 1506

Solution

  1. Make Parameter value as string and send one Request parameter as additional flag which describe request mode.

    /api/users/:user_key?type=boolean > true(default) userid & false for username or vice versa.

  2. Modify your api which then can answer two different apis

    /api/users/user/userid/:id & /api/users/user/username/:name

Recommended

Above can resolve your issue. But is not recommended way of dealing with fetching user profile information using REST api. Presuming you will introduced user authentication in you rest application.

  1. Self api : /api/users/me : this will fetch user info of the once who is currently logged with respect to that session/token.
  2. User api : api/users/:id : this will fetch fetch specific user info
  3. Username api: api/users?filters={username=some_username, }: this will fetch info of those users which have username matching with given filter.

Upvotes: 0

Soviut
Soviut

Reputation: 91585

It isn't really "good practice" to share a route parameter on a route, but as long as the IDs and usernames are both unique, you should be fine. Both act as unique identifiers for a user so both can be used to find the user in that route.

You can accept both the ID and username as the same parameter by first making the route param more permissive. Next, you can use the following (pseudo) query to look up whether that param matches the ID or the username:

SELECT id, name FROM users WHERE id={param} OR username={param}

Remember to pass that param in as a real query parameter; do NOT simply concatenate strings. Doing so will open you up to an SQL injection attack.

Upvotes: 0

cassiomolin
cassiomolin

Reputation: 130977

Assuming that both IDs and usernames are unique, it's valid solution.

Regarding implementation, you could use a regular expression to match the user identifier and check if it's an ID or a username.

Upvotes: 1

Balakrishna Gondesi
Balakrishna Gondesi

Reputation: 118

we solved it by parsing the path variable.

psuedo code

long id;
String name;
try{
id = parselong(input);
}catch(parse exception){
name = input;
}

findbynameorid(id,name)

select * from customer where name =  ? or id = ?

Upvotes: 1

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