Multiple records with one request in RESTful system
- by keithjgrant
All the examples I've seen regarding a RESTful architecture have dealt with a single record. For example, a GET request to mydomain.com/foo/53 to get foo 53 or a POST to mydomain.com/foo to create a new Foo.
But what about multiple records? Being able to request a series of Foos by id or post an array of new Foos generally would be more efficient with a single API request rather than dozens of individual requests. Would you "overload" mydomain.com/foo to handle requests for both a single or multiple records? Or would you add a mydomain.com/foo-multiple to handle plural POSTs and GETs?
I'm designing a system that may potentially need to get many records at once (something akin to mydomain.com/foo/53,54,66,86,87) But since I haven't seen any examples of this, I'm wondering if there's something I'm just not getting about a RESTful architecture that makes this approach "wrong".
