rest - Handling multiple parameters in a URI (RESTfully) in Java

Question

I've been working on a small scale web service in Java/Jersey which reads lists of user information from clients contained in XML files. I currently have this functioning in all but one aspect: using multiple parameters in the URI to denote pulling multiple sets of user information or multiple sets of client information. I have a version which currently works, but is not the best way nor what the project description calls for.

Currently, my code looks like this:

@Path("Client/{client}/users")
public class UserPage 
    {
    @GET
    @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_HTML)
    public String userChoice(@PathParam(value = "client") final String client) 
    {****Method here which handles a list of 'users'****}

@GET
@Path("{name}")
@Produces(MediaType.TEXT_HTML)
public String userPage(@PathParam(value = "client") final String client, @PathParam(value = "name") final String name)
    {****Method here which handles 'user' information****}

The first method handles a list of users from a 'client' denoted by "{client}" in the URI. The second method delivers 'user' information denoted by "{name}" in the URI. Both will function with a single argument. Currently, in order to handle multiple 'users' I have "{name}" comma separated like "Client/Chick-Fil-A/users/Phil,Bradley". I can parse this after using @PathParam and create an array of these 'users', but again, I feel this is not the best way to handle this, and the project description calls for something different.

Is there a way to accomplish this same task with a URI formatted as "Client/Chick-Fil-A;cd=Phil,Bradley"? (The ;cd= is what's giving me the most trouble.) I also need to be able to use this format for multiple clients, i.e. "Client;cd=Chick-Fil-A,Subway/users;cd=Phil,Bradley".

Edit: To clarify the project: The client information is contained in 6 separate files. Each of these files has the same 3 users (this is a proof of concept, effectively). I need to be able to pull different subsets of information, for instance, user Phil from McDonalds and Chick-Fil-A, or users Phil and Peter from McDonalds, or users named Peter from all clients, etc.

Answer 1

You cannot use '=' in the URL path since it's a reserved character. However there are many other character you can use as delimiters such as '-' and ','. So instead of '=' you can use '-'. If you really really want to use '=' then you will have to URL-encode it; however, I would strongly recommend against this because it may make things more complicated then it should be.

You can see the grammar of the URL string here:

http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.txt

Copy and search the following string to skip to the path grammar:

 path                    void |  segment  [  / path ] 

 segment                 xpalphas

That said, I believe HTTP request is usually used for request single resource only. So my personal opinion is to not implement the service the way you implemented. For getting multiple clients I would use query parameters as filters like this:

Client/{cName}/users?filters=<value1>,<value2> ...

Edit: From the business case you got there, it seems like you probably need service like

/users?<filters>
/clients?<filters>

So say you want to get Peter from all clients then can have a request of this form:

/users?name=Peter

Similarly, if you want to get Jack and Peter from Starbucks then you can do:

/users?name=Peter,Jack&client=Starbucks

Hopefully this helps.