How to model file system operations with REST?

Question

There are obvious counterparts for some of file systems\' basic operations (eg. ls and rm), but how would you implement not straightforwardly RESTf

Answer 1

I dont believe any of the given answers are RESTful. Here is what I would do.

For Copy:

PUT /videos/johns_videos/copied-2-gigabyte-video.avi
HOST: www.server.com
Content-Location: /videos/johns_videos/2-gigabyte-video.avi
[empty-body]

PUT the content's at location (/videos/johns_videos/2-gigabyte-video.avi) at (/videos/johns_videos/copied-2-gigabyte-video.avi).

A move would be a copy with a delete, to check for consistency between the copy and delete you will need to use a revision number which is given to you on the response of the PUT.

PUT /videos/johns_videos/copied-2-gigabyte-video.avi
HOST: www.server.com
Content-Location: /videos/johns_videos/2-gigabyte-video.avi
[empty-body]

    201 Created
    ETag: "3e32f5a1123afb12" (an md5 of the file)
    Location: /videos/johns_videos/copied-2-gigabyte-video.avi
    [empty-body]

DELETE /videos/johns_videos/2-gigabyte-video.avi
HOST: www.server.com
If-Match: "3e32f5a1123afb12"
[empty-body]

    204 No Content
    [empty-body]

Why is this RESTful?

• Does not append "move" or "copy" onto the URI (Which is RPC)
• It uses PUT (POST is to append to a collection, the target URI is not fully known)
• It does not use "commands" sent (e.g. XML instructions) which is RPC not REST.
• No understanding of underline storage - The client does not care about hard/soft links or write-on-copy optimisations and should never know about them.

Mike Brown