Re: [Pki-devel] TPS REST interface design
On 7/1/2013 11:37 AM, Ade Lee wrote:
> I also added a Change Profile State operation:
> http://pki.fedoraproject.org/wiki/TPS_REST_Interface#Change_Profile_State
>
The way this is written, it looks like you are just doing a POST to
the /tps/rest/profiles/<ProfileID> and passing in "action" as a
parameter. Thats not very RESTful at all.
I think we want:
/tps/rest/profiles/{id}/{action}
where {action} is approve etc. This is also consistent with how we have
done this for cert-requests etc. as well.
This is where I'd like to see the current API changed. These actions
(e.g. approve, enable) are not resources or collections. None of the
other operations (GET, PUT, DELETE) make sense on actions.
On the other hand, using POST to process data is a valid & RESTful
operation. POST request should be sent to a resource, and the resource
that we want to handle these actions is the target of the action (i.e.
profile).
According to POST definition:
* The actual function performed by the POST method is determined by the
server and is usually dependent on the Request-URI.
* The action performed by the POST method might not result in a resource
that can be identified by a URI.
* Example:
- Providing a block of data, such as the result of submitting a
form, to a data-handling process;
According to http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt (9.6 PUT):
The URI in a POST request identifies the resource that will handle
the enclosed entity. That resource might be a data-accepting process,
a gateway to some other protocol, or a separate entity that accepts
annotations.
Also, POST-ing to /tps/rest/profiles/{id} will be more future-proof in
case we add/remove actions later.
--
Endi S. Dewata