Question

Assuming a generic query like:

SELECT * FROM items
ORDER BY type ASC, created DESC

Is there any convention about designing a query string for building a Sorter class for result ordering? What about appending the direction after the sort key?

/items/list?sorts=typeASC,createdDESC // ORDER BY type ASC, created DESC

Missing equals to ASC:

/items/list?sorts=type,createdDESC // ORDER BY type ASC, created DESC

Answer 1

Check out the Open Data Protocol (OData):

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol for querying and updating data that provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores. The protocol emerged from experiences implementing AtomPub clients and servers in a variety of products over the past several years. OData is being used to expose and access information from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management systems and traditional Web sites.

OData is consistent with the way the Web works – it makes a deep commitment to URIs for resource identification and commits to an HTTP-based, uniform interface for interacting with those resources (just like the Web). This commitment to core Web principles allows OData to enable a new level of data integration and interoperability across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools.

Here’s an example of what it looks like in action:

http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc/Products?$skip=2&$top=2&$orderby=Rating