CODEWITHSUNDEEP
restapi
Sirish Renukumar
Sirish Renukumar

Reputation: 1717

Is it RESTful if we fetch multiple resources using path variable over query parameter?

Is it RESTful to have HTTP GET /employees/1,2,3,4,5? Or should this be modeled as HTTP GET /employees?id=1,2,3,4,5

Upvotes: 0

Views: 226

Answers (2)

cassiomolin
cassiomolin

Reputation: 130947

This question is more about URI design than REST.

A URI is intended to identify a particular resource in the server. While /employees identify a collection of employees, a URI like /employees/{id} should identify an employee with the given id in that collection. The slash expresses hierarchy.

If you want to get multiple resources from that collection (in fact, perform a query in that collection), it makes more sense to use a query parameter. Both approaches are valid:

GET /employees?id=1,2,3,4,5

GET /employees?id=1&id=2&id=3&id=4&id=5

Upvotes: 2

Awanish
Awanish

Reputation: 367

I had a simiar requirement to print all the data starting an index and ending with an index, I used query params as below. You can try this.. You can use..

../../employees?start=1&end=5

@GET
@Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
public String getInjectResources(@QueryParam("start") String start, 
@QueryParam("end") String end){

    String queryParams = "start: "+start+" end: "+end;
    // Your logic here..
}

Upvotes: 0

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