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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T15:51:19+00:00

I have put together an API that responds to a POST request by putting

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I have put together an API that responds to a POST request by putting the content of the new resource in the response body, and the URL of the new resource in the Location HTTP response header.

Sample request:

POST /api/v1/widgets HTTP/1.1
Content-type: application/json;
Accept: application/json;

{
    "name": "hugo@example.com",
    "price": "10",
}

Sample response:

HTTP 201 Created
Location: http://example.com/api/v1/widgets/123456

{
    'widget': 
    {
        'id': "123456",
        'created': "2012-06-22T12:43:37+0100",
        'name': "hugo@example.com",
        'price': "10",
    },
}

Someone has raised an issue that the URL should also be in the body of the response. Is there a best practice on this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would put it in the header (as Location: http://blah.blah.com/blah). You could put it in your body as well if you want (in whatever appropriate format you are sending), and it wouldn’t be improper.

    The atompub REST API is usually a good reference for a good REST API. They put it in both.

    HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 17:17:11 GMT
Content-Length: nnn
Content-Type: application/atom+xml;type=entry;charset="utf-8"
Location: http://example.org/edit/first-post.atom
ETag: "c180de84f991g8"  

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>Atom-Powered Robots Run Amok</title>
  <id>urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a</id>
  <updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</updated>
  <author><name>John Doe</name></author>
  <content>Some text.</content>
  <link rel="edit"
      href="http://example.org/edit/first-post.atom"/>
</entry>
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