RESTful nested collections

[Patrick Mulder]

Hello,

I am working on an API call that should give information on a collection that belongs to a user. My first idea was

GET http://example.com/collection.json?username=patrick

response:

{"user": { name: "patrick", ... }, 

  "collection": [ 

    { "sub-collection": [

         {"instance": ..., "url": "..." }

       ]

    }]

 }

 

However, this nested resources does look a bit complicated; any variations to design an API call like this?

(Basically, my use case is very similar to this collection call in flickr, and I would be interested in the photo URLs: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.collections.getInfo.html )

Thanks for sharing thoughts eventually,

Patrick

[Mike Kelly]

fwiw, if you represent it with hal+json[1] it will look something like this:

{
"_links": {
"self": { "href": "href": "/collection.json?username=patrick" },
"user": { "title": "patrick", "href": "/users/patrick" }
},
"_embedded": {
"items": [
{
"_links": { "self": { "href": "/item/123" },
"instance": ...
},
{
"_links": { "self": { "href": "/item/987" },
"instance": ...
}
]
}
}

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-kelly-json-hal

Cheers,
M

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Mike

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[Patrick Mulder]

Hi Mike,

thanks for your input. I see some value in the embedded links. About the link type on top level, why not use ID, meta, or root?

It maybe would point potential API consumers into easier semantics, that the payload follows as embedded document, and the rest is just 'meta'

anyway, just exploring right now.

cheers,
patrick