Question

Suppose I have Task and TimePeriod. TimePeriod represents the time I have worked on the task using start_time and end_time fields.

I would like for Task to support Starting/Stopping the task. Start will create a new TimePeriod with the current time. Stop will add end_time to the last TimePeriod.

I was thinking the REST URL will be like this:
PUT /tasks/1011?do=start
PUT /tasks/1011?do=stop

or maybe
PUT /tasks/1011/start
PUT /tasks/1011/stop

What is the proper way to make this REST style?

Answer 1

Here is one alternative. Retrieve the task like this,

GET /task/1011

Then to start the task, POST it like this,

POST /ActiveTasks  

and to end the task,

POST /InactiveTasks   

In reality it doesn’t matter what the URIs look like if you use the following representation for a task resource:

<Task>
  <Description>Do some stuff</Description>
  <Status>Active</Status>
  <Link rel="end" Method="POST" href="/InactiveTasks"/>
</Task>

or

<Task>
  <Description>Do some stuff</Description>
  <Status>InActive</Status>
  <Link rel="start" Method="POST" href="/ActiveTasks"/>
</Task>

Note that only one of the links will be available at any one time, depending on whether the task is currently active