Restful way for deleting a bunch of items

Question

In wiki article for REST it is indicated that if you use http://example.com/resources DELETE, that means you are deleting the entire collection.

If you use http://ex

Answer 1

Interestingly, i think the same method applies as to PATCHing multiple entities, and requires thinking about what we mean with our URL, parameters and REST method.

1. return all 'foo' elements:

   [GET] api/foo

2. return 'foo' elements with filtering for specific ids:

   [GET] api/foo?ids=3,5,9

Wherein the sense is the URL and the filter determine "what elements we are dealing with?", and the REST method (in this case "GET") says "what to do with those elements?"

1. Hence PATCH multiple records to mark them as read

   [PATCH] api/foo?ids=3,5,9

..with the data foo[read]=1

1. Finally to delete multiple records, this endpoint is most logical:

   [DELETE] api/foo?ids=3,5,9

Please understand I don't believe there are any "rules" on this - to me it just "makes sense"