Expose single REST endpoint (GET) which returns a parent object and all the child objects associated with it

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Is it correct to implement one REST endpoint (GET) to expose parent and set of child objects together?

e.g:

parent { name: parent, id: 123, Children:{ { childName:1 }, { childName:2 } } }

I am thinking two approaches:

  1. Implement one API named "parentWithchildren" (GET: /parentWithchildren/)
  2. Just endpoint for parent, and it will return a Parent object with set of child objects (GET: parent/)
rest api parent-child java
1 Answers

If we follow the rest api principles and we assume that your resource is Parent and a Parent can have children. Lets say each child is identifiable by Id as well as the Parent then your rest endpoint will look like:

get /parent/{parentId}
get /parent/{parentId}/child/{childId}

Now you can potentialy create crude version of your service that is also useful if your children dont have ID than it will look like:

get /parent/{parentId}?fetchChildren=true

Implementing an endpoint as /parentWithchildren is more of a RPC style of programming, not very rest like.

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