What's the REST way to verify an email?

Question

When a user register to my web application I send an email to verify his inbox. In the email there are a link to a resource like this:

GET /verify/{token}
         


        

Answer 1

Aren't you overthinking REST? With e-mail verification you want the user to be able to simply click the link from whatever mail user agent he is using, so you'll end up with a simple GET on the server (presented as a hyperlink to the user) with the token either in the path or as part of the query string:

GET http://example.com/verify-email/TOKEN
GET http://example.com/verify-email?token=TOKEN

Either is fine for this use case. It is not really a resource you are getting or creating; just a trigger for some process on the backend.

Why do you think this would run afoul of good design?