Querystring in REST Resource url

Question

I had a discussion with a colleague today around using query strings in REST URLs. Take these 2 examples:

1. http://localhost/findbyproductcode/4xxheua
2. ht         


        

Answer 1

In typical REST API's, example #1 is more correct. Resources are represented as URI and #1 does that more. Returning a 404 when the product code is not found is absolutely the correct behavior. Having said that, I would modify #1 slightly to be a little more expressive like this:

http://localhost/products/code/4xheaua

Look at other well-designed REST APIs - for example, look at StackOverflow. You have:

stackoverflow.com/questions
stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rest
stackoverflow.com/questions/3821663

These are all different ways of getting at "questions".