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

The ending of those two URIs is not very significant RESTfully.

However, the 'findbyproductcode' portion could certainly be more restful. Why not just http://localhost/product/4xxheau ?

In my limited experience, if you have a unique identifier then it would look clean to construct the URI like .../product/{id} However, if product code is not unique, then I might design it more like #2.

However, as Darrel has observed, the client should not care what the URI looks like.