Facebook API Question posted in
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REST API Designs with categories

Let’s say there is a SINGLE mobile application which receives various types of notifications (like WhatsApp notifications, Facebook Messenger notifications ,etc). What would be a better REST API structure for this?

/users/[email protected]/notifications //Gives all the notifications

There is a confusion between the below two formats on how .

/users/[email protected]/notifications?category=whatsapp,facebook    //Gives all the notifications

vs

/users/[email protected]/notifications/whatsapp  //Gives only whatsapp notification
/users/[email protected]/notifications/facebook  //Gives only facebook notification

To access an individual notification resource

/users/[email protected]/notifications/facebook/{notification-id}

vs

/users/[email protected]/notifications/{notification-id}
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2

Answers


  1. 0

    If a resource has a unique ID then it should be directly accessible from that, so in my opinion 

    /notifications/{id}

    Would make most sense. In terms of filtering, this is probably more about preference than anything. Here’s what I think would be the most idiomatic approach

    /notifications    // fetch all notifications
/notifications/facebook    // fetch all Facebook messages
/notifications/whatsapp    // fetch all WhatsApp messages
/users/{id}/notifications    // fetch user notifications 
/users/{id}/notifications/facebook    // fetch user Facebook notifications 
/users/{id}/notifications/whatsapp    // fetch user WhatsApp messages
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  2. 0

    It really depends on how you define a notification resource and the relation with its category type (whatsapp, facebook…).

    Non category dependent

    If the structure of a notification is not dependent on its category, then you want to access it without any category context:

    /users/[email protected]/notifications/{notification-id}

    And you can use the category as a filter to a collection of notifications:

    /users/[email protected]/notifications?category=whatsapp,facebook

    category dependent

    Otherwise, if a notification is structurally dependent on its category (e.g., if you want to define different actions when you deal with whatsapp notifications than when you deal with facebook notifications), then you might want to distinguish a notification according to its category:

    /users/[email protected]/notifications/whatsapp/{whatsapp-notification-id}
/users/[email protected]/notifications/facebook/{facebook-notification-id}

    In this case, you could have: 

    /users/[email protected]/notifications/whatsapp/1
/users/[email protected]/notifications/facebook/1

    That define 2 different notifications (although it uses the same identifier).

    Now requesting a collection of this kind of notifications is a bit different than the previous “non category dependent” case.

    If you only want to have whatsapp notifications then simply call the category resource does the job:

    /users/[email protected]/notifications/whatsapp

    But if you want to search on different categories, then you cannot apply your request to a specific category resource. Indeed, it makes no sense to ask for facebook notifications when you deal with whatsapp ones:

    /users/[email protected]/notifications/whatsapp?category=facebook # weird

    One solution would be to make as many requests as there are categories requested:

    /users/[email protected]/notifications/whatsapp
/users/[email protected]/notifications/facebook

    But you will have to merge your results later.

    Another solution would be to apply your query directly from 

    /users/[email protected]/notifications?category=whatsapp,facebook

    But the result will be different than the “non category dependent” case. Indeed, you won’t be able to directly have your list of notifications, but a list of categories to access to your list of notifications.

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