REST and HTTP Semantics

Roy Fielding created REST as his doctorate dissertation. 

After reading it, I would boil it down to three basic elements:

1. A document that describes object stat

2. A transport mechanism to transmit the object state back and forth between systems

3. A set of operations to perform on the state

While Roy was focused solely on HTTP, I don't see why another transport could not be used. Here are some examples:

• Mount a WebDAV share (WebDAV is an HTTP extension, so is still using HTTP). Copy a spreadsheet (.xls, .xlsx, .csv, .ods) into the mounted folder, where each row is the new/updated state. The act of copying into the share indicates the operation of upserting, the name of the file indicates the type of data, and the columns are the fields. The server responds with (document name)-status.(document suffix), which provides a key for each row, a status, and possibly an error message. In this case, it does not really make sense to request data.

• Use gRPC. The object transmitted is the document, HTTP is the transport, and the name of the remote method is the operation. Data can be both provided and requested.

• Use FTP. Similar to WebDAV, it is file-based. The PUT command is upserting, and the GET command is requesting. GET only provides a filename, so it generally provides all data of the specified type. It is possible to allow for special filenames that indicate a hard-coded filter to GET a subset of data.

Whenever I see REST implementations in the wild, they often do not follow basic HTTP semantics, and I have never seen any explanation given for this, just a bunch of varying opinions. None of those I found referenced the RFC. Most seem to figure that:

• POST = Create

• PUT = Update the whole document

• PATCH = Update a portion of a document

• GET = Retrieve the whole document

This is counter to what HTTP states regarding POST and PUT:

• PUT is "create" or "update". GET generally returns whatever was last PUT. If PUT creates, it MUST return 201 Created. If PUT updates, it MUST return 200 OK or 204 No Content. The RFC suggests the content for 200 OK of a PUT should be the status of the action. I think it would ok in the case of SQL to return the new row from a select statement. This has the advantage that any generated columns are returned to the caller without having to perform a separate GET.

• POST processes a resource according to its own semantics. Older RFCs said POST is for subordinates of a resource. All versions give the example of posting an article to a mailing list; all versions say if a resource is created that 201 Created SHOULD be returned.

I would argue that effectively what POST really means is:

• Any data manipulation except create, full/partial update, or delete

• Any operation that is not data manipulation, such as:

• Perform a full-text search for rows that match a phrase.

• Generate a GIS object to display on a map.

The word MUST means your implementation is only HTTP compliant if you do what is stated. Using PUT only for updates obviously won't break anything, just because it isn't RFC compliant. If you provide clients that handle all the details of sending/receiving data, then what verbs get used won't matter much to the user of the client.

I'm the kind of guy who wants a reason for not following the RFC. I have never understood the importance of separating create from update in REST APIs, any more than in web apps. Think about cell phone apps like calendar appointments, notes, contacts, etc:

• "Create" is hitting the plus icon, which displays a new form with empty or default values.

• "Update" is selecting an object and hitting the pencil icon, which displays an entry form with current values.

• Once the entry form appears, it works exactly the same in terms of field validations.

So why should REST APIs and web front ends be any different than cell phone apps? If it is helpful for phone users to get the same data entry form for "create" and "update," wouldn't it be just as helpful to API and web users?

If you decide to use PUT as "create" or "update", and you're using SQL as a store, most vendors have an upsert query of some sort. Unfortunately, that does not help to decide when to return 200 OK or 201 Created. You'd have to look at the information your driver provides when a DML query executes to find a way to distinguish insert from update for an upsert or use another query strategy. 

A simple example would be to perform an update set ... where pk column = pk value. If one row was affected, then the row exists and was updated; otherwise, the row does not exist and an insert is needed. On Postgres, you can take advantage of the RETURNING clause, which can actually return anything, not just row data, as follows:

SQL VALUES (...) ON CONFLICT() DO UPDATE SET (...) RETURNING (SELECT COUNT() FROMWHERE=) exists" data-lang="text/x-sql" style="box-sizing: border-box;">1

INSERT INTO <table>
VALUES (...)
ON CONFLICT(<pk column>) DO
UPDATE SET (...)
RETURNING (SELECT COUNT(<pk column>) FROM <table> WHERE <pk column> = <pk value>) exists

The genius of this is that:

• The subselect in the RETURNING clause is executed first, so it determines if the row exists before the INSERT ON CONFLICT UPDATE query executes. The result of the query is one column named "exists", which is 1 if the row existed before the query executed, 0 if it did not.

• The RETURNING clause can also return the columns of the row, including anything generated that was not provided.

You only have to figure out once how to deal with if an insert or update is needed and make a simple abstraction that all your PUTs can call that handles 200 OK or 201 Created.

One nice benefit of using PUT as intended is that as soon as you see a POST you know for certain it is not retrieval or persistence, and conversely, you know to search for POST to find the code for any operation that is not retrieval or persistence.

I think the benefits of using PUT and POST as described in the RFC outweigh whatever reasons people have for using them in a way that is not RFC-compliant.

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