I'm building a REST interface to my application using ROA (Resource Oriented Architecture) .

I'd like to give the client the ability to specify search parameters in URL. So a client could say "Give me all people who's:

• "first_name" is equal to "BOB"
• "age" is greater than "30"
• sort by "last_name"

I was thinking something like:

GET /PEOPLE/{query_parameters}/{sort_parameters}

...or perhaps

GET /PEOPLE?query=<query_string>&sort=<sort_string>

...but I'm unsure what syntax would be good for specifying in the COLUMN_NAME-OPERATOR-VALUE triplicates. I was thinking perhaps something like:

column_name.operator.value

So the client could say:

GET /PEOPLE?query=first_name.EQUALS.bob&query=age.GREATER_THAN.30&sort=last_name.ASCENDING

I really don't want to re-invent the wheel here, are there some accepted ways that this is done? I am using Restlets, I don't know if that makes a difference.