Re: Web Services API: URL naming proposal

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

Figure i will wade in here.  Hopefully others will follow.

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Erik Huelsmann <..hidden..> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Before going into detail how to interact with resources, I think we
> need to come up with a resource (URL) naming scheme which works for
> our application. There may be some things to consider, so, I thought
> I'd put out a proposal for review. From there, we could go into the
> more technical details of the actual interaction.
>
> We agreed to start with the functionality which has been rewritten
> since our SQL Ledger fork, known as 'new code'. One of the notable
> areas this has happened to is the way customers, vendors and employees
> are now recorded. I'll direct my proposal there first.

That's probably wise since other web services would habe to be rewritten later.
>
> Before going into the details of the customer/vendor store, there are
> a few general subjects to address:
>
> 1. The base address mentioned by John was something like
> 'http://myledger.com/ledgersmb/store/'. However, if we assume that the
> login address of the 'http://myledger.com/ledgersmb/login.pl', there
> may be an issue with the '/store/' part. Can we support that on all
> servers, or does that not matter? Do we allow '/store.pl/' or any
> other URL? ie. do we not consider that part of the API, other than
> that it is a prefix?

i don;t think that would be a problem. I don't like store though
because it is pretty unclear.  I would suggest a base path of:

http://myhost/ledgersmb/webservices/company_name/

Then http auth headers can be used for the rest.
>
> 2. Since companies are separate databases, where do we put the name of
> the company in the URL? <prefix>/store.pl/<company>/<etc...>?
>
What do you think of the above proposal?
>
> Are there other items to consider before we go to specify the web
> service behaviour of our natural/legal entity storage paradigm?
>

I think the key issue is designing a logical entity hierarchy for
things. Otherwise I don't see any other issues that will come up in
this preliminary stage.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers