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I'm trying to understand how to construct URIs for RESTful web services. Assume I had a dating site, would the following be correct:

  • domain.com/profiles/ <-- list of profiles
  • domain.com/profiles/123/ <-- profile number 123
  • domain.com/profiles/123/likes/ <-- list of profile 123's likes
  • domain.com/profiles/123/likes/2/ <-- 2nd item in the list of profile 123's likes

Am I close or did I get this totally wrong?

StackOverflowNewbie
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  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4003665/uri-for-restful-web-services – StackOverflowNewbie Oct 23 '10 at 11:42
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    I found the following post helpful when I was in your spot: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2001773/understanding-rest-verbs-error-codes-and-authentication/2025116#2025116. Focus on defining the resource(s) well; the URLs should come for free after that. – Roatin Marth Oct 23 '10 at 11:46
  • What your URIs look like doesn't matter. There are no URIs that are more 'restful' than others. There is no such thing as a 'restful' URI. Nothing about how your URIs look makes your service satisfy the conditions of REST. – rojoca Oct 23 '10 at 14:27

2 Answers2

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Just think about whether your URLs provide meaningful operations for GET, POST, PUT and DELETE requests. That's what REST is really about, rather than beautiful URLs.

Paul Dixon
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Looks like you are trying to slip method chaining into here. If you are using a framework, your method may end up looking like this:

 function profiles($pid=0,$likes=0,$which=0){}

which can be more difficult to program.

when you may really be going for:

 function listProfiles(){}
 function getProfile($profileID){}
 function getLikes($profileID){}
 function getLikeElement($profileID,$int){}

This being said, your implementation is entirely up to you. There is no one standard.

Brandon Frohbieter
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