While forming a REST URL for our application, how should we differentiate two services related to the same object?

Question

need two services related to the object "item".

1. To get the details of the item. Though it is a method to get data, I will be using POST since my pathParam/MatrixParam list is too long(Say, purchaserIds provided in the matrixParam is used to fetch the items they have bought). To avoid "URI too long" exception, I made it POST.

2. To save the item with some details. This will also be a POST method since it is saving/updating.

Now, both services will have the same url http://...../item and both will have httpMethod as POST.

How can we differentiate these 2 services by the URL? Is it right to make it "http://.../item/save" and ".../item/get"?

Answer 1

If your URLs would end up too long, it sounds like your URL design is wrong - GET against http://.../items/1/purchasers/ would (for example) be a decent URL to return all the people who have bought item 1, then to update item 1, you would PUT to http://.../items/1/ and to create an item you would POST to http://.../items/

The URL scheme you decide does not sound RESTful, as you're using it to describe actions rather than resources - the URL should identify the resource you are accessing rather than what to do to it.

Answer 2

To get the details of item you will need to use GET method with item id as path parameter.

http://....../itemid

using POST for GET will defeat the purpose and entire design of the api will be disturbed.