Ask HN: Designing a REST API

2 points by dwilkie 14 years ago | 4 comments

I am in the middle of building a REST api using Rails. Basically a client app can post to the api with a message and an author. The service then figures out what to reply and who to reply to in a background process.

My question should I design it so that the api posts back to the client's callback url when the reply message has been calculated (similar to Paypal IPN) or should the I design it so that the client must poll the server to see when the reply has been generated?

e.g.

Polling solution Client app: POST myapi.com/messages

then poll GET myapi.com/messages/2324

Callback URL solution

Client app: POST myapi.com/messages

server: POST clientapp/messages

My initial thoughts are that a callback url is better because less requests have to be made from the client to the server. And the client app will also be simpler and more responsive since there is no polling required. But this doesn't seem very RESTful? Should I care? Are there any advantages of having polling solution that I'm overlooking?

dickeytk 14 years ago |

pollback is definitely not RESTful, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Both methods can work for different scenarios.

Also, you could look into long polling using redis or something.

rhizome 14 years ago |

Can you think of any APIs that use the pollback method?

dwilkie 14 years ago | |

Paypal use a callback method for their IPNs

rhizome 14 years ago | | |

I meant the mentioned method by which the client polls back to the API for request/transaction status.