Rest api sub resources Resources are "information that can be named" () or "whatever might be identified by a URI" (). “Acceptance Criteria” User can list the books. This will be an example app to show how you can give a user control on included sub-resources in a REST-ish API. Relationships ¶ As we have seen in Resources, the resource is the fundamental unit in RESTful API design. Jul 4, 2019 · Designing an API from scratch implies taking a lot of long-term decisions. One of them is the handling of nested resources. Users can have several links associated with them. This comprehensive guide aims to demystify the complexities of resource modeling in REST APIs, providing actionable insights Paths and Resources This section provides details on resources and fields and provides the associated naming conventions and standards. Guidance An API may define singleton resources. If I want to update a guest resource, Jun 15, 2015 · This question is about optimal REST API design and a problem I'm facing to choose between nested resources and root level collections. In other words, any concept that might be the target of an author's hypertext reference must fit within the definition Nov 4, 2023 · In REST, having a strong and consistent REST resource naming strategy – will prove one of the best design decisions in the long term. A resource is an object with a type, associated data, relationships to other resources, and a set of methods that operate on it. . This series of articles about Restful API design is also available as an eBook on Amazon, if you need it in a handy format. I rece Aug 3, 2025 · In modern web development, Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs have become the de facto standard for building web services that are scalable, maintainable, and easy to understand. Clients and servers can negotiate on a preferred hypermedia type Instead of embedding the whole (sub-)resource consider only returning the link to that resource so a client can Aug 14, 2014 · “The key abstraction of information in REST is a resource. Aug 5, 2024 · In the context of REST, a resource is any information that can be named and represented in a format understandable by clients and servers. Designed from the ground up by a practitioner to prepare you to build APIs for the real world. Resources model objects from the application data model. Mar 16, 2024 · Sub-resources in API design are similar; they represent a hierarchical relationship within your API, offering a structured way to access nested data. This article weighs the benefits and pitfalls to help you make informed decisions in your Jan 28, 2025 · REST API Endpoints Naming Guidelines REST APIs are among the most widely used web interfaces today, enabling communication between various clients, including browser apps, and services. Resources do not exist in isolation, but have relationships to other resources. The fact that one identifier is hierarchically subordinate to the other doesn't have any meaning to general purpose REST components. I have a resource venue: /venues each venue has guests: /venues/1/guests This is where I am confused about. From a consistency perspective, if PUT is allowed for a "sub-resource" I would at least expect to be able to GET it separately from its parent resource as well. However, if you are concerned about performance issues, bear in mind that premature optimization is the root of all evil. Any information that can be named can be a resource: a document or image, a temporal service (e. Mar 1, 2024 · Learn more about Azure Web PubSub Service service - Handles requests to list all resources in a resource group. For instance, if you're managing a blog platform, a post (resource) might have comments (sub-resources). NET Core. Our Goal is to provide self describing APIs where links help the API consumer how to use the API. There will be a single #index action and some seeds. includes Feb 22, 2017 · Maybe splitting the main resource into multiple sub-resources makes sense if the main resource is a complex entity with many arrays and other related entities. And I'd like to support accessing by id. Understanding what resources are, how they are identified, and how we interact with them is paramount to designing and consuming Jan 26, 2019 · A resource usually has fields, and resources may have any number of sub-resources (usually collections). Resources can be documents, images, services, collections Jul 9, 2018 · typed resources where clients expect a certain, generic resource to return specific data. So "cars" is a nested array of a Person. Learn how to build professional-grade APIs using C# and ASP. Mar 12, 2019 · Many questions arise when we start designing an API, especially if we want to create a REST API and adhere to the REST core principles: Client-Server Architecture Statelessness Cacheability Layered System Uniform Interface One topic in this space that is debated quite often is the nesting of resources also called sub-resources. To demonstrate the concept, suppose I have collections City, Understand which resource providers support Azure Resource Manager and their schemas, available API versions, and the regions that can host the resources. Each resource has its unique id. Sep 4, 2024 · Learn how to use resources and collections for a REST API, getting stuck into some real world examples, using links to get between them all, and some pitfalls to avoid. @Scottm - One drawback of nested resources that I came across is that it could lead to returning incorrect data if the parent resource ids are incorrect/mismatch. Apr 4, 2018 · How to map your endpoint URLs to define sub-resources in your RESTful API. Resources almost always have relationships to other resources. Introduction Paths Resources Be Consistent Prefer Single Root Resource Defining Sub-Resources Defining Resources with Non-Unique Identifiers Defining Resource Actions Resource Identifiers Standards for Paths and Resources Introduction A REST API’s path Aug 13, 2025 · In 2022, I designed a REST API for a retail app, proudly nesting sub-resources like /orders/ {id}/cancel for actions, thinking it was clever. Sometimes these relationships exist between the mapped objects in the application data model as well, sometimes they are specific to the RESTful A resource is the fundamental unit in RESTful API design. It is similar to an object instance in an object-oriented programming language, with the important difference that only a few standard methods are defined for the resource (corresponding to the Feb 24, 2025 · Discover whether using sub-resources for actions in your REST API is a good practice or a potential trap. What I am doing currently is: List sub-resources by type GET /resources/ Relationships and Sub-Resources View on GitHub Relationships and Sub-Resources A resource is the fundamental unit in RESTful API design. If you don't need/want the benefits REST provides, simply don't go for it - but, please, don't call it REST then! Nov 20, 2014 · I am trying to use nouns and sub-resources as a best practice and not necessarily make the rest api match my database model but it is new and scary. By 2025, debugging bloated endpoints and client Apr 3, 2018 · The next article will focus on defining sub-resources in your RESTful API. Mar 1, 2021 · More specifically, should POSTing/PUTting of the parent resource should POST/PUT/DELETE the nested resources? For example, I have a REST API with Persons and their Cars. Nov 21, 2012 · When designing resource hierarchies, when should one use sub-resources? I used to believe that when a resource could not exist without another, it should be represented as its sub-resource. Apr 1, 2021 · Learn more about Resource Management service - Get all the resources in a subscription. Jul 26, 2022 · To begin: "sub-resources" aren't really a thing in REST. Working with Google HTTP APIs: Describes how Google APIs work with different HTTP versions and implementations. A common use case for this is for a config object. Resource modeling serves as the architectural backbone of REST APIs, offering a framework for visualizing and planning your API data. Aug 2, 2018 · I have some resources with 2 types of sub-resources. I have two resources: users and links. At the very heart of any RESTful API lies a fundamental concept: the resource. I am designing a RESTful API and I came up with a problem related to sub-resources. Take the example where Company has Departments and Jun 30, 2016 · REST does not care about URI design - but on its constraints! Clients perform state transitions through possible actions returned by the server through dynamically identified hyperlinks contained within the response. I have designed my RESTful API so that you can reach the links associated with a user at the following URI Oct 24, 2025 · Pub/Sub REST API reference: Provides a detailed specification for available methods and resources. This article weighs the benefits and pitfalls to help you make informed decisions in your Mar 27, 2024 · In RESTful APIs, the term ‘hierarchical resource structures’ refers to the structuring of resources in a nested or tree-like structure where the resources are connected to one another. Mar 22, 2022 · What will we do? We will build a bookshelf app to list books with (or without) authors data. Let's discuss. "today's weather in Los Angeles"), a collection of other resources, a non-virtual object (e. g. jobs (get, post) Jan 26, 2016 · 1 HTTP and REST don't care if a resource is a "sub-resource", they have no structural knowledge of a "can't exist without" constraint. URIs as resources (nouns) One of the most common mistakes that API developers, including myself, make is misusing nouns and verbs in REST URIs. Note: While there is some conceptual alignment between storage systems and APIs, a service with a resource-oriented API is not necessarily a database, and has enormous flexibility in how it interprets resources and methods. Sep 8, 2022 · Here's a quick guide on naming REST API resources and endpoints, which will help you design APIs which are intuitive, easy to use and will make frontend developers fall in love with you 😉. Apr 21, 2025 · Article Summary: REST API Design Best Practices for Sub and Nested ResourcesThis article discusses the best practices for designing nested resources in REST APIs. Feb 24, 2025 · Discover whether using sub-resources for actions in your REST API is a good practice or a potential trap. User can pass includes query parameter to load associated resources (author). It highlights the importance of readability and hierarchical relationships in URL structures. Hypermedia Support for relationships A Nov 6, 2023 · Follow these steps to design a REST API - Identify the Object Model, Create Resource URIs, Determine Representations, and Assign HTTP Methods. list sub-resources so GET /sub-resour Mar 1, 2024 · Learn more about Azure Web PubSub Service service - Create or update a shared private link resource Feb 5, 2014 · Creating my first REST API and I have a question. Assuming there are no authorization issues, it is left upto the api implementation to verify that the nested resource is indeed a child of the parent resource that is passed. Also of note, the server should assign ids to the Persons as well as it should for Cars. a person), and so on. I see other APIs using full URL to operate over sub-resources. The interaction therefore will be similar to RPC style invocation where the server dictates a certain message format which will couple clients tightly to the service. Oct 3, 2022 · Lets assume we have some main-resource and a related sub-resource with 1-n relation; User of the API can: list main-resources so GET /main-resources endpoint. Resources ¶ The fundamental concept in any RESTful API is the resource. Jan 11, 2013 · Thinking in a RESTful way, is it correct to use POST to create in a single call a resource and its sub-resource? In my application I have the resource /notices/ {notice} and sub-resource /notices/ {n May 12, 2019 · API Improvement Proposals General AIPs Singleton resources AIP-156 Singleton resources APIs sometimes need to represent a resource where exactly one instance of the resource always exists within any given parent. So /houses and /houses/1 are each "resources". A singleton resource must always exist by virtue of the existence of its parent Sep 1, 2023 · Resource Modeling in Rest API Design In the world of API development, effective management and organization of resources are paramount. twgizr zmsbcj ilxk94 t7tre ureq4 tnno m66nb v1gl vj3resk zuhl6