REST api design to retrieve summary information
- by Jacques René Mesrine
I have a scenario in which I have REST API which manages a Resource which we will call Group.
A Group is similar in concept to a discussion forum in Google Groups.
Now I have two GET access method which I believe needs separate representations.
The 1st GET access method retrieves the minimal amount of information about a Group.
Given a *group_id* it should return a minimal amount of information like
{
group_id: "5t7yu8i9io0op",
group_name: "Android Developers",
is_moderated: true,
number_of_users: 34,
new_messages: 5,
icon: "http://boo.com/pic.png"
}
The 2nd GET access method retrives summary information which are more statistical in nature like:
{
group_id: "5t7yu8i9io0op",
top_ranking_users: {
[ { user: "george", posts: 789, rank: 1 },
{ user: "joel", posts: 560, rank: 2 } ...]
},
popular_topics: {
[ ... ]
}
}
I want to separate these data access methods and I'm currently planning on this design:
GET /group/:group_id/
GET /group/:group_id/stat
Only the latter will return the statistical information about the group. What do you think about this ?
