I'm writing a web app with node/express and I'm trying to set up some restful routes. Basically I have some generic items and I have a page that has a list of these items. so I've set up the following route:
router.get('/items')...
I'm currently setting up add/update items as well, but I'm not sure if I should set up a PUT for add and POST for update, or use POST for both? I've read that POST is acceptable for both add/update, but if I use post for add and update, then I have to use the same route, is this correct? Which would mean I have to pass back some sort of 'action' parameter to tell the route what action to take.
is this a situation where I should use PUT and POST separately?
You can use post to do both the insert and update with a url pattern like this
POST -> items/ -- add an item
POST -> items/{itemId} -- updates the given item with the id itemId
Refer this for a more detailed description
https://stackoverflow.com/a/630475/381407
Related
I have started designing addToCart method as HTTP POST in my RESTful API. This looks good when the client adds to cart a product first time (POST create a new entry on server). But, the same HTTP rule breaks when the client browses through the site and adds the same item again; where we should not create a new entry but only update the quantity of existing item.
Isn't using POST to update resource wrong? What is the way to implement this? or how to interpret this situation.
Note: Client/UI front which uses my api would not remember if its already there on server. Please consider any ecommerce application's addtocart as example.
I think the difficulties here are already present in how you add the original item to the cart.
When you add an item to cart, are you creating a new object (the item)? Or are you modifying an existing item (the cart)? To me it makes more sense to say the latter. POSTing an item seems like it should be reserved for a different situation, when you add a new item to your store.
Conceptually, the cart is then like a vector of all the items in your store, associated with a number (0 for almost all of them). Adding something to the cart means incrementing this number for one of the items, regardless of whether it is already more than 0.
You can use PATCH to send a part object / update to an existing object.
It's based on your model. IMHO a POST is also fine if you are modelling a new intent or cart-operation with it, which can be basically anything.
Note: I consider here that POST means "create" and PUT means "update", as GitHub does. This is not the place to argument in favor of POST or PUT.
I have a company resource and an assign action. I'm wondering how to translate this behavior in my REST API.
I thought about something like:
PUT /company/:id/assign
user_id: 5
What about if I want to unassign this user?
Should I use a boolean as a parameter?
Should I use an unassign action?
Should I use use another HTTP verb?
On the latest GitHub API I saw how to star a gist:
PUT /gists/:id/star
Why not, but how to unstar a gist:
DELETE /gists/:id/star
It seems pretty strange to me. You are updating an action on a resource and deleting it. Weird. I could understand whether POST instead of PUT.
POST /gists/:id/star and DELETE /gists/:id/star seems more logic to me. What do you think?
EDIT: I'm going to work with POST and DELETE. But as this is not possible to send data with the DELETE method, I have to pass the user_id in URL:
POST /company/:id/assign/:user_id
DELETE /company/:id/assign/:user_id
Using a boolean is not really clear. I could consider it as a non-obvious argument term. Consider that the most the API interpretation is obvious, the most your syntax is good.
Using the DELETE method is, finally, the best option you can choose. When you assign a user to a company, you create a relation. When you want to unassign, you delete the relation.
Lets say I have resource representing images
PUT /images/[id] with path -> going to create me a new image resource if already present updates my resource
POST /images/[id] -> to change or update a resource Ex., image name
DELETE /images/[id] -> this will delete my resource
GET /images/[id] -> gets me the image details
Now the actual question. what if I need to add additional actions to the images ?. Lets say the image resource will respond to a red eye reduction action or any other like crop, resize
So how these action are considered and how this should be called in restful interface ?
/images/[id]/remove_redeye
/images/[id]/crop
/images/[id]/resize
Is the above calls valid in restful interface ? I am confused about what should these action should be considered(PUT POST)?
"Remove redeye", "crop", and "resize" all sound like actions which "change or update a resource." They would belong in a PUT action. (I think you mixed up PUT and POST in your question, refer to the verbs listed at w3c.)
How you convey the nature of the action depends on what's being POSTed. For example, if we were talking about a form sitting on top of a database record, the POST would simply be the data for that record. It wouldn't be necessary to specify which fields are being changed because the whole object is being POSTed in its new state.
Is the whole object being POSTed in its new state in this case? Or does the object live only server-side and the interface is just sending a request for some kind of action? It sounds like the latter to me, based on the information provided.
In that case you can include in the POST some more information about the action. Keep in mind that a POST can contain key/value pairs in its data and/or a larger and more complex POST body. This body can contain XML, for example, specifying a lot more information for the server to use in processing the request. Maybe something like this:
<image id="123">
<resize>
<width>200</width>
<height>200</height>
</resize>
</image>
This could even allow multiple actions within the same request, allowing the user to try various things client-side before committing them all in a single unit of work server-side. How you'd process that or if it's even applicable in this case is up to you, of course.
PUT /images/[id] means to add a new resource or to fully replace an existing one.
POST means to create (/images) or to modify a resource (/images/[id]). If you create a resource, the server may return that resource for you.
For several modifying actions on the same resource (POST), I tend to use a custom header to define the kind of modification. In this case your resources
/images/[id]/remove_redeye
/images/[id]/crop
/images/[id]/resize
would translate to:
POST /images/[id] HTTP/1.1
X-RESTAction [remove_redeye|crop|resize]
I am using T4MVC to redirect to another action return RedirectToAction(MVC.MyController.MyAction());.
In result it is doing get request.
Is there any way to make post request from controller. I want to keep all the same but only make post instead get. I cant find any methods for that. I found one post helper here http://geekswithblogs.net/rakker/archive/2006/04/21/76044.aspx but i cant pass any values i need using this post helper. I was trying to pass values through TempData but they are not coming when i using this helper. May be some one have any ideas?
The reason i want to do this because when user come from one controller to another and then if user click update or just click enter in browser address bar, page will break.
Should i use session for that reason?
A RedirectToAction will always perform a GET, never a POST (it returns a HTTP 302 to the browser, which will then issue a GET request).
To persist data across the redirect, if it is data that can be easily represented as a string and stored in the query string, then you can just add it to the route values of the redirect.
e.g.
return RedirectToAction("Search", new { searchString = "whatever" });
If it is a complex type, then you will need to store it in TempData. A number of other questions on StackOverflow (such as this one) give details on how.
If repeatedly storing to and reading from TempData across your application offends your code-sense, then you can encapsulate this by using the PassParametersDuringRedirect attribute and generic RedirectToAction available in the MvcContrib project. Some details on this technique are available here.
only way of doing post is by having a form and doing submit on that form, either with a submit button or with javascript, any info you want passed to that action must be in that form and you will find everything posted in FormCollection(hope I spelled it right).
I have delete links in my Asp.Net Mvc2 application.
/{controller}/Delete/{id}
It seems using link to delete has a security risk. Don’t use Delete Links because they create Security Holes
I found this Implementing RESTful Routes & Controllers in ASP.NET MVC 2.0 but I am not sure how to implement a simple delete functionality using the new HttpDeleteAttribute class.
Are there any examples on deleting, the RESTful approach?
The RESTful approach to a Delete is to send enough information to identify the resource and use the HTTP command DELETE (or some alternative for web pages). But all of that is detailed in the article, so I don't think that's what you're really asking.
If you mean "What do I do instead of a Delete link?", the answer is usually to go to a "Are you sure you want to delete Product 8496?" form where the button's action POSTs the delete request. That form can either be on a new page or a modal popup, or both if you want to combine usability and accessibility.
It's a (more of) a security risk if you dont use the [HttpPost] attribute on the controller.
Besides that, your approach isn't a restful one.
The idea is that you have just one Url that can be passed different Http Verbs which are implicit
Return all: /Product/ [HttpGet]
Return One: /Product/43 [HttpGet]
Add : /Product/ (Product info in form post) [HttpPut] or [HttpPost]
Delete: /Product/43 [HttpDelete]
You can do this using MVC in the standard form or JQuery
And to answer the question:
Add a delete link like this Delete Product but hook into it using the JQuery live events so that it hijacks the click using .preventDefault, then call the url as an ajax request with a DELETE verb.
Need more help let me know