[Pulp-list] Action Parameters

[Bryan Kearney]

On 06/22/2010 12:16 AM, Jason L Connor wrote:
> 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.
>
>

If (3) is a well formed json document then if you move to making the 
body a first clas resource it will be easy. Plus, it makes it easier for 
integration.

On a related note, my suggestion would be for someone to hack in a 
non-python client with automatic marshalling (ActiveResource or RestEasy 
clients). It will help you learn how nice, or not, your API is.

-- bk