How to specify a resource id when the unique id is made up of multiple pieces of data?

[Mandy Warren]

Hi I am wondering about how best to representative a resource id when the id is unique only through a combination of items. For example, a bank account may only be unique with the combo of account number plus sort code. I could specify:

/accounts/someHashOfTheAcctNumPlusSortCode

or

/accounts?accountnumber=123456&sort=121230

The downside of the 2nd option would be if I wanted to access a subresource of the account eg the last 20 transactions as the query params for the different resources get mixed together.

/accounts/transactions/accountnumber=123456&sort=121230&max=20

(please note this is only an analogy, I don't work in banking!)

Any help gratefully received!

Thanks
Mandy

[Ian Joyce]

I would consider something like /accounts/{account-number}-{sort} or /accounts/{accountNumber}/{sort}

Mandy

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[Phil Jackson]

Hey Mandy,

If sort code were meta data of an account then another option might be
to use:

/account/123456?sortcode=121230

It doesn't really work in the banking example but it might for your
real world scenario.

Cheers,
Phil

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[Mandy Warren]

Thanks Ian and Phil. I think I prefer Phil's approach but having read
more about matrix params I would prefer to use:

accounts/123456;sortcode=121230

So that I could do something like:

accounts/123456;sortcode=121230/transactions?orderby=alpha

to specify to return me all the transactions for the specified account
ordered alphabetically. Matrix params would refer to a particular
resource and the query param would refer to filtering of the
responses.

I will post a separate post about matrix param usage as I am keen to
see how people use these in real life.

Mandy

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