Hi,
Rails 1.2 is just around the corner and the entire world is on the verge of going REST crazy. There has been mention (from DHH at times) of tutorials to show how to think RESTfully and fit in most comfortably with the Rails way. An online store is always a popular example and I went through the exercise to see how I might make a store REST friendly. Below are the URL's I came up with for a basic store front with the common parts of a store interface for customers. It could be that some of these URL's should be disguised for a friendlier user experience but the URL's below are what I think of as the raw REST-based URLs. If anyone has suggestions for changes I'd be interested to read the reasons or see examples of other types of apps and their URLs.
store splash page entrance list of departments
GET http://store.com/departments/23
department 23 page list of products in the department
GET http://store.com/cart_items;new?product=31
what we think of as the product 31 page shows the form to create a new cart_item based on product 31 with options and quantity has the "add to cart" button
POST http://store.com/cart_items
create a new cart item based on form information including product id redirects to cart
GET http://store.com/cart_items/612;edit
show the form to edit a cart item. If this cart item is for product 31 then we will see this as the product 31 page again but the button will say "update" instead of "add to cart".
PUT http://store.com/cart_items
updates a cart item based on form information including cart_item id redirects to cart
DELETE http://store.com/cart_items/612
delete link shown on cart view page removes an item from the cart wants html: redirects to cart wants js: sends javascript to update the cart view
GET http://store.com/cart_items
show the shopping cart has the "checkout" button
GET http://store.com/puchases;new
form to checkout (shipping, credit card info) has the "finalize" button
POST http://store.com/purchases
finalize the purchase redirects to "thanks for purchase page"
GET http://store.com/purchases/55
the "thanks for purchase page" with a receipt.
GET http://store.com/purchases
customer order history with shipping status etc
GET http://store.com/customers;new
form to create an account
POST http://store.com/customers
create a new customer account starts a new session like logging in would redirect to "thanks for signing up page"
GET http://store.com/customers/77
show customer his details
GET http://store.com/customers/77;edit
edit customer details
PUT http://store.com/customers/77
update customer details redirect to show customer details
GET http://store.com/sessions;new
customer login page (sessions are sort of singletons per customer)
DELETE http://store.com/sessions
customer logout does not actually delete the session as another login can restore it. redirect to "thank you for shopping" page or back to the page where the logout was initiated if allowed there in logged out state
Peter
