REST API – why use PUT DELETE POST GET?

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The idea of REpresentational State Transfer is not about accessing data in the simplest way possible.

You suggested using post requests to access JSON, which is a perfectly valid way to access/manipulate data.

REST is a methodology for meaningful access of data. When you see a request in REST, it should immediately be apparant what is happening with the data.

For example:

GET: /cars/make/chevrolet

is likely going to return a list of chevy cars. A good REST api might even incorporate some output options in the querystring like ?output=json or ?output=html which would allow the accessor to decide what format the information should be encoded in.

After a bit of thinking about how to reasonably incorporate data typing into a REST API, I’ve concluded that the best way to specify the type of data explicitly would be via the already existing file extension such as .js, .json, .html, or .xml. A missing file extension would default to whatever format is default (such as JSON); a file extension that’s not supported could return a 501 Not Implemented status code.

Another example:

POST: /cars/
{ make:chevrolet, model:malibu, colors:[red, green, blue, grey] }

is likely going to create a new chevy malibu in the db with the associated colors. I say likely as the REST api does not need to be directly related to the database structure. It is just a masking interface so that the true data is protected (think of it like accessors and mutators for a database structure).

Now we need to move onto the issue of idempotence. Usually REST implements CRUD over HTTP. HTTP uses GET, PUT, POST and DELETE for the requests.

A very simplistic implementation of REST could use the following CRUD mapping:

Create -> Post
Read   -> Get
Update -> Put
Delete -> Delete

There is an issue with this implementation: Post is defined as a non-idempotent method. This means that subsequent calls of the same Post method will result in different server states. Get, Put, and Delete, are idempotent; which means that calling them multiple times should result in an identical server state.

This means that a request such as:

Delete: /cars/oldest

could actually be implemented as:

Post: /cars/oldest?action=delete

Whereas

Delete: /cars/id/123456

will result in the same server state if you call it once, or if you call it 1000 times.

A better way of handling the removal of the oldest item would be to request:

Get: /cars/oldest

and use the ID from the resulting data to make a delete request:

Delete: /cars/id/[oldest id]

An issue with this method would be if another /cars item was added between when /oldest was requested and when the delete was issued.

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