(2007-01-12) Downey Website Api

Paul Downey on driving a web/ReST API from a WebSite. Excellent, shows actual HTTP headers and XML going back and forth

• transactions via HttpPost (LoRest)

• getting individual objects or collections via HttpGet.

Note interesting query URI-s (all slashes instead of question-mark to start the query, then name=value pairs of params) - I'm not sure whether there's an official standard/language/spec for this model, or just some Best Practices - I Commented to ask. He just pointed at the URI syntax, which didn't seem to cover such a style.

• Ah, he's just treating the user info as part of the Path instead of the Query. I Commented with follow-up questions. He replies .

• This Joe Gregorio column considers such alternatives. One principle we'll follow is using the built-in hierarchy building that the URI "path" component allows. That is, we'll use the path portion of the URIs in our system to reflect the hierarchy of our resources. Conversely, if we have resources that are non-hierarchical we'll use either query parameters or Matrix URIs. The W3C has documentation on this hierarchy model.

• also, note that there are probably still issues where HttpCaching doesn't happen if a URI has a question mark in it. So there's possibly some benefit to trying to reduce the use of query strings.