REST – Is It Correct to Use PUT with Multipart Content

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We are using Spring and want to implement a REST with a "override file" call so we think using PUT verb with a multipart body only to find that Spring don't accept it.

My question is it can't be done in Spring because it isn't the REST way to have a multipart body with PUT?

Note: I know there are ways to skip this restriction in Spring or that I can use POST but I want to stick to REST style if possible.

Best Answer

If you GET the same resource at the same URI, what do you expect to get back? Do you expect to get the same multipart content that you sent, i.e. the data and the file, or just one of them?

If it's the latter, then it's not a RESTful use of PUT, since one URI no longer refers to one resource. You would be better off considering using POST, or splitting the multipart content into two separate resources.

Related Solutions

PHP REST – Designing an Application to Use REST

One popular php framework allows faking PUT/DELETE requests by adding a _method=PUT argument to your form action:

<form method="POST" action="/customers/12345?_method=PUT">

Internally, the framework converts the POST request to a PUT request.

http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/routing/method_parameters.html#faking-the-method-with-method

Easy enough to implement. But I would follow @vrostu's advice and look into a javascript REST framework instead of trying to use forms.

REST API Design – Is It Okay to Use POST for Updates?

You can use POST to update a resource but not using the same URL as the resource you're updating. So, if the URL to use with PUT/PATCH is /api/cars/dealers/1, you'd have /api/cars/dealerupdates to send your POST requests with body as in your PATCH request.

This way it's clear that you're not creating new entity under /api/cars/dealers/ or /api/cars/dealers/1. What created is new update entity which will be applied at some point to the entity inside the request. Another way to see it is: sending GET request to /api/cars/dealerupdates can give a list of updates that have been processed.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

PHP REST – Designing an Application to Use REST

REST API Design – Is It Okay to Use POST for Updates?

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