Spring-rest sub resource request on missing parent - rest

Question

I have a User entity and a Post entity with a One User to Many Posts relationship. To get a user resource I make a GET request to this endpoint in the UserController:
http://localhost:8080/users/{userId}
If the requested userId does not correspond to a user in MySQL I throw an exception with a 404 User not found error through the UserService class (code below).
public User getUser(Integer id) throws ResourceNotFoundException{
return userRepository.findById(id).map(user -> {
return user;
}).orElseThrow(() -> new ResourceNotFoundException("User with the ID " + id + " is not available"));
}
Now in order to get a Post resource I use this endpoint on the PostController:
http://localhost:8080/users/{userId}/posts/{postId}
My question: What if I request a Post (whatever this is) on a non existing User? Is the best logic to throw a 404 User not found error again, or Post not found? If so, how can I combine the UserService getUser(id) and the PostService getPost(id) to throw the error?

Answer 1

Actually it depends how do you map the relationship between user and post.
If it is bidirectional relationship and cascade type is ALL then while deleting the user all the posts created by the user also will get deleted.
So if above is the case then you just check for user in DB if not found then show user not found.
Also you should perform the recommended approach to delete a user using soft delete