Question

I want to GET an object that depend on another one sent by the client. So in normal scenario i should first POST the initial Object, then retrieve it to construct the final object and get it with GET method. How can i do it without a session? (We are in a RESTful Application ).

Is it possible to add an Object(XmlElement) in the Response to a POST request using Jersey?
I want to avoid having to do 2 operations (POST, then GET).
Is it in contradiction with HTTP Protocol?

Answer 1

With POST you can take an input document and produce an output document, and it doesn’t require any kind of session. The POST verb really just means “do something with this”; it’s much less specific in meaning than GET, PUT or DELETE. However, if the processing operation is likely to take a “long time” (which is a fuzzy concept) then you are better off creating a resource in response to the POST that tracks the processing and redirecting the client to that resource; like that, they can pick up the results once they’re available. It’s up to you whether you use a session to manage the resource existence, but I don’t really recommend it at all; access control should be by the users identity whether or not there’s a session involved, and the processing resource should be available to anyone who asks (and is authorized). You may well need to consider carefully what’s involved in managing semi-transient resources (e.g., a database and expiry policy) and design your whole application carefully with those things in mind.