Retrieving a collection of IDs instead of the full representation of a resource in REST

Question

I\'m designing a REST API for the first time, so I have what I consider a quite basic question about its design.

I would like the files collection to return an ID (o

Answer 1

Just do it.

I would call it a standard RESTful API design pattern to have an abbreviated resource representation in your collections resource and the full representation only on your entity resource.

So /files would return something like:

[
  {
    name: "foo",
    url: "example.org/files/3321"
  },
  {
    name: "bar",
    url: "example.org/files/3192910"
  }
]

While /files/3321 returns the full file representation

{
  name: "foo",
  self: "example.org/files/3321"
  encoding: "UTF-8",
  type: "xml-document"
}