[Pulp-list] Action Parameters

[Jason L Connor]

On Mon, 2010-06-21 at 16:29 -0700, Mike McCune wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 

+1 for convention #3 as well. I think having the parameters named in the
body will also help us with debugging the calls.

-- 
Jason L Connor
Senior Software Engineer
Systems Management and Cloud Enablement
Red Hat, Inc.
+1.919.890.8331
Freenode: linear
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 490 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/pulp-list/attachments/20100621/6dd61e1a/attachment.sig>