[Pulp-list] Action Parameters

[Mike McCune]

On 06/21/2010 02:37 PM, Jason L Connor wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I've been playing around with making our API conform to the restful
> practices in the 'rest-practices' branch. While hacking away, I've
> noticed that we don't really have any particular convention for the
> format of parameters (read: body) passed into action POST calls.
>
> There are a number of conventions we can adopt:
>
> 1. no convention: let each controller figure out the parameters it
> expects and the order it expects them in.

-1

REST is free-flowing enough, lets not make it worse with no convention.


> 2. only one parameter: the body contains only a single parameter, which
> can be a list or dictionary of multiple parameters.

still seems too untyped for me.  Even looking at the controller's

>
> 3. key word arguments: the body always contains a dictionary, of
> <parameter name>:<parameter value>  pairs
>

clear, concise and obvious.  What isn't to love?

> 4. others?
>
> ----
>
> The reason I bring this up is: The restful practices has produced some
> very nice looking patterns that allow for some abstraction in the web
> services layer. However, not having a convention for the way parameters
> are passed into the action uris limits our ability of abstraction and
> places a burden on both client and server developers by having to know
> how to format parameters on a action by action basis.
>
> I don't have really strong feelings about this. But it seems like a nice
> practice for consistency.
>
> Thoughts?
>

I vote #3.  keep it named and obvious.