RESTful url - few tips

Many beginners associate REST url’s with url having some identifier to identify the resource even if the identifier is present in the url parameter.

For e.g.,

http://www.myshop.com/shopping/products?productid=1

Here the url seems to be identifying a resource (product) with an identifier (productid) 1

However technically this is not a RESTful url.

REST ways of looking at resources says that the web is a web of information resources on which you can take standard actions.  HTTP is a good example of REST with the resources identified by url’s and the standard actions on those resources are GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. The most predominant operations done in HTTP is to get the resource representation using GET and make updates to it using POST.

A resource oriented RESTful  url must serve as an unique identifier without the additional parameters, meaning the url itself should have the identifier in itself, something like this

http://www.myshop.com/shopping/products/1

Another important distinction is that the url must not include any verb rather only nouns because the verbs (actions that could be performed) are already defined as standard actions. For e.g., have a look at this url.

http://www.myshop.com/shopping/getproducts/1

Some frameworks might make use of this kind of url to map a method “getproducts” in the controller and pass the identifier 1. However this cannot be taken as a true resource identifier as it includes a part “getproducts” which has nothing to do to identify a resource. So in essence a RESTful url should be a resource oriented url which uniquely identifies a resource.