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Asked: 2026-06-09T11:01:01+00:00

I asked a question a while back i.e. How save an entire backbone collection?

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I asked a question a while back i.e. “How save an entire backbone collection?”. However what intrigues me is that why is a save method not offered? Is it unRESTful to save (PUT/POST) entire collections or is it uncommon to do so in the REST-land?

GET:  /MySite/Collections - allowed by collection.fetch()
POST: /MySite/Collections - for the model(s) in the collection to be Posted when calling model.save()
PUT:  /MySite/Collections/{id} - for the model(s) to be updated individually
GET:  /MySite/Collections/{id} - to fetch an individual model throuth model.fetch()

So why not allow for POST/PUT an entire collection of resources? It is convenient sometimes and although one can wrap/hack out some code using collection.toJSON why not include it? I’m just curious about its absence and the rationale for the same. Frameworks not having the capability of a few things usually implies bad programming/design and are thus left out. Is saving an entire collection ‘bad practice‘?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The wikipedia article about REST does mention CRUD verbs for collection.

    But, in my opinion, a Collection is not a resource, it is not an entity, and it has not state. It is, instead, a bunch of resources. And if there would be an UPDATE command for a Collection it would be nothing else but a multiple UPDATE commands over multiple Models. Having the possibility of multiple UPDATE commands in only one request would be helpful but I think this is not a job for the REST implementation.

    Also there will be problems of ambiguity, for example in a Collection that contains already saved Models with id and so on, and others that not, what will a POST command mean?… or an UPDATE command?…

    No talking about the increase of the complexity in the server side where, if this Collection REST support should be taken like standard, we should to work the double to accomplish the casuistic.

    Summarizing: I don’t see any case where the need of a Collection REST command can’t be solved with the actual, simpler, only-Model REST commands, so keeping the things as simple as possible I think is a good habit.

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