Question

I need to design a REST API for my project. It is needed for a two-way synchronization of a mobile application with a web application.

Obviously, before starting, I have studied how other projects have implemented a similar scenario.

Commonly when the mobile app wants to get all the new items from the web application, it sends a ‘start_timestamp’ in the request as a time reference.

I have found out that Plancake requires also an ‘end_timestamp’, in order to define a clear time window. You can read that in the last point of ‘About the request:’ in this paragraph:
http://www.plancake.com/apiDocumentation#api_doc_overview

Do you think I should consider using an ‘end_timestamp’ or it is a complication that brings very small benefit?

Thanks,
Dan

Answer 1

start_timestamp and end_timestamp are powerful information that enhance task management and give you more control over your tasks. In addition they add a monitoring feature to your application.

Imagine your application fires two tasks to sync with your web server. Both would possibly write the same data and your data would get inconsistent. So you need a feature to control and guarantee that no other task is operating on a specific part of your web server for the moment.

everytime you can pass a ‘start
timestamp’ as parameter (typically the
server timestamp of the latest
synchronization), you are forced to
pass also an ‘end timestamp’ (that
should be the server timestamp of when
you start the current syncing).
Although many products don’t require
that, we believe that is very
important in order to assure
consistency (think of what can happen
if a task is added while a
synchronization takes place)

Of course you may use your own technique to accomplish that.