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

By the REST client the URI structure does not matter, because it follows links annotated with semantics, and never parses the URI.

By the developer who writes the routing logic and the link generation logic, and probably want to understand log by checking the URLs the URI structure does matter. By REST we map URIs to resources and not to operations - Fielding dissertation / uniform interface / identification of resources.

So both URI structures are probably flawed, because they contain verbs in their current format.

1. /findbyproductcode/4xxheua
2. /findbyproductcode?productcode=4xxheua

You can remove find from the URIs this way:

1. /products/code:4xxheua
2. /products?code="4xxheua"

From a REST perspective it does not matter which one you choose.

You can define your own naming convention, for example: "by reducing the collection to a single resource using an unique identifier, the unique identifier must be always part of the path and not the query". This is just the same what the URI standard states: the path is hierarchical, the query is non-hierarchical. So I would use /products/code:4xxheua.