ASP.NET Web API REST Querystring - How does a client know available parameters and options? - rest

Question

When exposing querystring parameters using GET I have the following base URL:
https://school.service.com/api/students
This will return the first 25 students.
What if I want to return a list of students based on ONE of the following criteria:
* have accepted a job
* have received a job offer
* have no job offers
The three above choices are essentially an enum.
Therefore, the query request for students who have no job offers I assume would look like:
https://school.service.com/api/students?jobOfferStatus=3
However, I'm wondering if jobOfferStatus=3 is the proper way to handle this. If so, how would I publish/provide to the clients a list of available options for that jobOfferStatus query parameter? What about other possible query parameters and their valid options? We'll have many possible query parameters like this.
I'd love to see an example of how this should be done properly. What are the best practices?

Answer 1

There are two main options: documenting it, or making it discoverable. A lot of APIs have documentation where they list all of the resources and parameters for reference. Otherwise, the client won't know.
You could also make it discoverable in some way by including the options in a response. For conventions on this, search for HATEOAS if you haven't already. (I'm not really knowledgeable enough about HATEOAS myself to make a suggestion.)
I will mention that "3" is not a very meaningful value for jobOfferStatus, and there's no need for the client to know that number. You can make it anything you want -- jobOfferStatus=none or even jobOffer=none. Your controller can do the work of matching that value to your enumeration. Try to design your interface to be intuitive for developers (and, of course, write good documentation).
To handle multiple query parameters, you can use optional parameters in your function:
public HttpResponseMessage GetStudents(string jobOffer = "",
string other1 = "",
string other2 = "")
{
if (jobOffer == "accepted" && other2 == "whatever") {
// return a response
}
else {
// return a different response
}
}
When the client uses parameters by those names, you can tailor your response appropriately.

Answer 2

You have some options to do this, let's try to help:
1) Configure a generic route to asp.net web api knows how to solve another action's name different from Get to a get method, on the App_Start\WebConfigApi.cs class, try to add this:
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute("DefaultApiWithActionAndId",
"api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { id = RouteParameter.Optional });
Using it, you can have diferent methods on the api controller:
// request: get
// url: api/Students/GetStudents
public HttpResponseMessage GetStudents()
{
return Request.CreateResponse(...);
}
// request: get
// url: api/Students/GetStudentsWithJobOffer
public HttpResponseMessage GetStudentsWithJobOffer()
{
return Request.CreateResponse(...);
}
// request: get
// url: api/Students/GetStudentsAcceptedJob
public HttpResponseMessage GetStudentsAcceptedJob()
{
return Request.CreateResponse(...);
}
2) Use a simple parameter on the Get method:
// request: get
// url: api/Students?jobOfferStatus=1
public HttpResponseMessage GetStudents(int jobOfferStatus)
{
// use jobOfferStatus parameter to fill some list
return Request.CreateResponse(...);
}
3) Use a simple method with a parameter named id, to get a default friendly url by asp.net mvc web api.
// request: get
// url: api/Students/1
public HttpResponseMessage GetStudents(int id)
{
// use the id parameter to fill some list
return Request.CreateResponse(...);
}