The RESTful flow?

Question

So...

I've been reading about REST a little bit, and the idea behind it sounds nice, but the question is, can it be easily integrated into the standard flow of a webpage?

For example, a user creates some sort of item, a blog post or what have you, and now he wants to delete it, so he clicks a 'delete' link on the page. Now what? How do we issue a DELETE request to, say, http://mysite.com/posts/5? And how do we handle that request? I have no experience with cURL or anything, but from the looks of it, I would have to curl_init('http://mysite.com/posts/5') and then work some magic. But where would I even put that script? That would have to be on another page, which would break the whole idea of REST. Then I would just be GETing another page, which would in turn DELETE the page I originally intended?

Is this why people rarely use REST or is there actually a nice way to do this?

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Looks like I need to clarify. People are suggesting I include words like "DELETE" and "POST" in the URL. I believe REST dictates that we have a unique URL for each resource but not for each action on that resource. I assume this also means that we only have one and only one URL for each resource. i.e. I want to be able to DELETE or VIEW the contents of a particular post from one URL (by sending either DELETE, PUT, POST, or GET), not different URLs with additional params

Answer 1

Don't overthink it. You're not going to be able to do this with straight HTML forms and a browser. They do not support DELETE method. Ajax can do it.

I want to be able to DELETE to VIEW the contents of a particular post from one URL (by sending either DELETE, PUT, POST, or GET), not different URLs with additional params

Delete to view? I'm not sure I understand it, but your delete should be done through the headers, not through the URL. The delete method should not return a view. REST is a service, not all requests are meant for visual consumption.

Answer 2

If you really have no choice about using the DELETE verb then I would suggest something like the following:

POST http://mysite.com/Trashcan?resourceUrl=/Customer/75

What url you use really does not matter to REST, however, it is easier to understand the REST way of interacting if your urls avoid verbs completely.

I have seen so many questions from both Rails and ASP.NET MVC users who need to go beyond the standard "actions" and it is so tempting to just add a new action on the controller. The problem with doing this is that you just threw away the uniform interface constraint of REST.

The trashcan metaphor is not the only way of doing deletes restfully but I would argue that it is just as clear to read as putting a "delete" in the url.

Here are some more "noun-based" ways of replacing verbs.

POST http://mysite.com/Printer/75/PrintQueue?url=http://mysite.com/Document/xyz
POST http://mysite.com/CurrentLogins?user=bob
POST http://mysite.com/QueryProcessor?query=FindMyInformation
POST http://mysite.com/SearchEngine?searchTerms=cat,blue,furry
POST http://mysite.com/OrderProcessor?cart=http://mysite.com/user/2323/cart

Sometimes you have to think out of the box a little to come up with a noun based url, and may seem pedantic to try and do this, but for me the benefit comes from the ability to manage my variables. I am going to have a variable number of resources in my interface, no matter what I do, if I can fix the number of verbs that can operate on those resources then I reduce one of my variables.