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PORESTful API design: best way to CRUD lightweight connections?
 

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    <p>(Pardon the question title; hard to summarize this question.)</p> <p>On Facebook, you <code>like</code> things. On Twitter, you <code>follow</code> people. On GitHub, you also <code>follow</code> people and <code>star</code> repos and gists.</p> <p>All of these cases are pretty similar: those connections are lightweight, not really "resources" themselves. E.g. none of those three APIs expose public IDs for such connections.</p> <p>This raises the question: <strong>what's the "best" (in terms of REST) way to expose an API for creating/querying/deleting those connections?</strong></p> <hr> <p><strong>Facebook</strong> does [<a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/" rel="nofollow">1</a>]:</p> <ul> <li><p><code>GET /:id/likes</code> to query an object's likes (more precisely, the users that like that object)</p></li> <li><p><code>POST /:id/likes</code> to like something (on behalf of the auth'ed user; no req body needed)</p></li> <li><p><code>DELETE /:id/likes</code> to unlike something (on behalf of the auth'ed user)</p></li> </ul> <p>The querying and creating make sense, but the <code>DELETE</code> is a bit "unRESTful", because you're not actually deleting the <code>/:id/likes</code> resource (an array of users that like that object).</p> <p>This discrepancy shows itself in another case [<a href="https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/540/" rel="nofollow">2</a>]:</p> <ul> <li><code>GET /me/likes/:id</code> to query whether you like something</li> </ul> <p>So querying your connection is querying a totally different resource than creating or deleting it.</p> <hr> <p><strong>GitHub</strong> leans to the <code>/me/likes/:id</code> style for following users and starring <em>repos</em> [<a href="http://developer.github.com/v3/activity/starring/" rel="nofollow">3</a>]:</p> <p>(Note that GitHub's <code>/user</code> represents the auth'ed user, like Facebook's <code>/me</code>.)</p> <ul> <li><p><code>GET /user/starred/:owner/:repo</code> for querying whether you have a repo starred (returns 204 or 404, no body either way)</p></li> <li><p><code>PUT /user/starred/:owner/:repo</code> for starring a repo (no body needed in request)</p></li> <li><p><code>DELETE /user/starred/:owner/:repo</code> for unstarring a repo</p></li> </ul> <p>This is much more consistent, but unfortunately this separates individual "stars" from the group:</p> <ul> <li><code>GET /repos/:owner/:repo/stargazers</code> to query the users who've starred a repo</li> </ul> <hr> <p><strong>GitHub</strong>, interestingly, uses a different style for starring <em>gists</em> [<a href="http://developer.github.com/v3/gists/" rel="nofollow">4</a>]:</p> <ul> <li><p><code>GET /gists/:id/star</code> for querying whether you have a gist starred</p></li> <li><p><code>PUT /gists/:id/star</code> for starring a gist</p></li> <li><p><code>DELETE /gists/:id/star</code> for unstarring a gist</p></li> </ul> <p>This keeps the starring action with the gist resource, like Facebook, rather than the user resource.</p> <p>GitHub doesn't publicly expose <em>gists'</em> stargazers, but presumably it'd be e.g.:</p> <ul> <li><code>GET /gists/:id/stargazers</code> to query the users who've starred a gist</li> </ul> <p>While "stargazers" is indeed a different resource/name than "star", the names are similar and clearly related, and they're both on the same resource.</p> <p>The only downside I can think of to this is naming the resource. Something like <code>star</code> works, but actions like <code>follow</code> or <code>like</code> are trickier.</p> <hr> <p>(Not bothering to include the Twitter API as an example since it's hardly RESTful.)</p> <p>There's clearly no perfectly RESTful API for creating/querying/deleting things that aren't proper resources, but are there other pros/cons I'm not seeing, or other styles to consider?</p> <p>Thanks!</p>
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