Okay, so I am trying to embrace the RESTful approach to web application design and wanted to get some feedback from others. I understand that it can be done different ways, I'm just interested to see what real RESTful theorists think. Lets say that you have an application that has lists and items on that list. I can see how both lists and items can be set up as resources. Now, lets say you want to have an action to both show you the current sorted list* and then allow you to save a new sort. You would need a custom GET action to "show_sort" and a PUT or POST to "save_sort".
map.resources :lists :member => {:show_sort => :get, :save_sort => :put}
or
map.resources :items :collection => {:show_sort => :get, :save_sort => :put}
This just seems weird. Neither look great or feel RESTful. The resource you are interacting with is really the item_sort, but I can't imagine people would create a model for that? Am I over thinking things? What would other people recommend in this scenario?
Thanks, Tom
* Ideally you could show the sort and make modifications right on the show action of the list, but for discussion lets assume a separate action is required.