REST, caching, and authorizing with multiple user roles
- by keithjgrant
We have a system with multiple different levels of access--sometimes even for the same user as they switch between multiple roles. We're beginning a discussion on moving over to a RESTful implementation of things. I'm just starting to get my feet wet with the whole REST thing.
So how do I go about limiting access to the correct records when they access a resource, particularly when taking caching into consideration? If user A access example.com/employees they would receive a different response than user B; user A may even receive a different response as he switches to a different role. To help facilitate caching, should the id of the role be somehow incorporated into the uri? Maybe something like example.com/employees/123 (which violates the rules of REST), or as some sort of subordinate resource like example.com/employees/role/123 (which seems silly, since role/### is going to be appended to URIs all over the place). I can help but think I'm missing something here.
