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javarestspring-mvcrestful-architecture

RESTful URL design

We have a function to check whether an address is validate.

At first the url is like

/address/validate/{city}/{state}/{zipCode}

But later I thought that all the parameters for address is just one resource. So I changed it to

/address/validate/{city}.{state}.{zipCode}

I'm not sure which one is better, what's your advice?

Solution

  • In this case I would go for /address/validate?city={city}&state={state}&zipcode={zipCode}

    Why? Well it is just my opinion. But think of paths (uris) as a unique identifier for a representation. Which usually is a part of your model domain. Since you are not storing (presumably) the result of the validation then just create a validate resource.

    Think of it as a method. And the parameters are query-params.

    So, doing this, the representation of validate (whether is valid) is modified by the params.

    Think in rest as a representations, in your example I guess that /address/ exists as a resource, and it has a representation on your data model. So you can POST, PUT and or GET to create, modify and retrieve.

    But if you want a /address/validate this is probably the result of the validation. SO I'd go with my example.