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    <p>The query string can still be used in REST web services just not in the same way as normal.</p> <p>You have to think of the URL as the <em>key</em> to a resource. The URL is an unique identifier for the resource. For example</p> <pre><code>http://example.com/products/123 -- where 123 is the id of the products. </code></pre> <p>Accessing to <code>/products</code> would return a full list of products. Adding the id would return a specific product.</p> <hr> <h3>The problem with using slashes for every filter</h3> <p>What if you want to order product in a specific way? Some would say </p> <pre><code>http://example.com/products/united-states </code></pre> <p>Well, now there is some ambiguity at the first look. Is united-states an id? Well that ambiguity can be solved by saying an id is represented as <code>\d+</code>. Correct.</p> <p>Ok so our first parameters which is made of words is a country.</p> <p>Now lets say we want to add more filters, lets try and add more slashes.</p> <pre><code>http://example.com/products/united-states/home/asc </code></pre> <p>But I don't want united states products only! But still want home products.</p> <pre><code>http://example.com/products/home/asc </code></pre> <p>Wait... is home a country? I'm not sure now, it's kind of ambiguous... And what if I want to add another filter tomorrow? What will I do... add more slashes?</p> <p>The URL becomes cluttered and full of ambiguous parameters that were optional at first and that become obligatory because of ambiguity.</p> <hr> <h3>My advice</h3> <p>The correct way, to me, would be to use the <strong>query string</strong> for thing specific about the query. Because, I can sort the query in any way I want, it is still the same query. I query products.</p> <p>So the form should be like</p> <pre><code>http://example.com/products -- all products http://example.com/products/{id} -- specific one http://example.com/products/?country=united-sites -- filtered </code></pre> <p>This way you can add new filters anytime you want and keep URLs that are clear and won't ever break even though you change the filters.</p> <hr> <h3>More information</h3> <p>If you want more information I really, really advise you to <strong>look at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=NEWTPFzt2-E">this conference</a></strong> by David Zülke, a guy working for the Symfony framework. He talks about a lot of things of REST web-services, but he also talk specifically about URLs, and how to build them <em>(Mainly from 16 to 30 minutes)</em>.</p> <p>You can also look at <strong><a href="http://apigee.com/about/api-best-practices">apigee website</a></strong>. They have a lot of videos (and books) about REST. More specifically <a href="http://apigee.com/about/api-best-practices/restful-api-design-second-edition">this video</a>, which is really on topic here.</p>
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