[Catalyst] RFC: Catalyst::Controller::REST::DBIC

[J. Shirley]

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Matt S Trout <dbix-class at trout.me.uk> wrote:
>
> On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 09:06:30AM -0700, J. Shirley wrote:
>  > On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Zbigniew Lukasiak <zzbbyy at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > >
>  > >  Sorry but I don't understand your point - so maybe first I'll restate
>  > >  mine.  If you have primary key in the database that is of type varchar
>  > >  (or char or ...) then 'create' is a legitimage value for that primary
>  > >  key.
>  > >
>  > >  If you just don't like the string 'id' in the URI - then I have not
>  > >  any preference to that - it can be /foo/primary_key/ for me.
>  > >
>  >
>  > My point is that you do not have to use the primary key as the record
>  > lookup identifier.
>  >
>  > A user has no control over the record lookup identifier (ID) when you
>  > do things like /user/{primary_key} (or /user/id/{primary_key}, which
>  > is just converting named params to positional in a weird way).  In a
>  > lot of cases, the record lookup identifier makes more sense to be
>  > somewhat bound to the user.  As an example, lets say registering for a
>  > web service where you have to have a unique login:
>  >     POST /user/jshirley
>  >     ---
>  >     login: jshirley
>  >     first_name: Jay
>  >     last_name: Shirley
>  >     ...
>  >
>  > Now, it's a simple check here - does /user/jshirley exist?  If so,
>  > reject the request appropriately.  If not, create the user at
>  > /user/jshirley.
>  >
>  > The primary key that the database uses is completely useless to the
>  > user.  /user/1634254 is silly, /user/jshirley is meaningful.
>
>  I fail to see how whether the PK is the lookup key or not has any
>  relevance at all to the original point, which was "your lookup key and
>  names of actions might clash so it can be nice to have an extra path component
>  such as 'id' for the lookup part to disambiguate".
>
>

Because I'm talking about REST and a verb in the URI doesn't need to be there.

If we were talking about RPC, that would be a differently titled
thread and different arguments.