[rest-practices] ID as an attribute [was Re: [deltacloud-devel] Towards declaring the Deltacloud API stable]

[Bryan Kearney]

On 05/12/2010 05:44 AM, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-05-06 at 21:47 +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>
>> Related, with the RHEV-M API we're experimenting with making both the
>> id and href attributes, which would work out nice here:
>>
>>    GET /api/images HTTP/1.1
>>
>>    <images>
>>      <image id="1234" href="/api/images/1234"/>
>>      <image id="9876" href="/api/images/9876"/>
>>      ...
>>    </images>
>>
>> rather than:
>>
>>    GET /api/images HTTP/1.1
>>
>>    <images>
>>      <image href="/api/images/1234">
>>        <id>1234</id>
>>      </image>
>>      <image href="/api/images/9876">
>>        <id>9876</id>
>>      </image>
>>      ...
>>    </images>
>
> Just wanted to bring this up again - it got lost in the mix
>
> I don't feel very strongly about it either way, but I do prefer:
>
>    POST /storagedomains/1234/attachments HTTP/1.1
>
>    <attachment><datacenter id="5678"/></attachment>
>
> over:
>
>    POST /storagedomains/1234/attachments HTTP/1.1
>
>    <attachment><datacenter><id>"5678"</id></datacenter></attachment>


This may be a Java centric issue, but will the former result in json 
which looks like:

{datacenter: {@id = "5678}}

That is kinda ugly, which is why I have tried to use elements where 
possible. I do not remember if it was Jersey or RestEasy which did this.

-- bk