[smiler]

Either way I don't think it matters. Just get it done. Clients do not care about URL structure, they just want their problem solved. I redid an app and prettified the urls (yes I know this is slightly off topic) and no one has commented on it.

Developers will use either, just do it and provide documentation and be done with it

[kenjackson]

Exactly. REST is interesting, but understand why its interesting. If you're doing it because its a popular buzzword, that's just cargo cult.

It's good to know about REST so you can use it where it makes sense. But at the end of the day, doing what is right for your app trumps following any given methodology.

[icebraining]

But then it's important to document when you're breaking the constraints. Nowadays it's impossible to know if a web service is actually following REST or not because everything remotely similar gets the same label.

[espeed]

This is the same position Mark Nottingham (http://www.mnot.net/personal/) takes and expresses in his talk "Leveraging the Web for Services at Yahoo!"(http://www.infoq.com/presentations/services-without-soap-yah...).

However, Mark created a service called "Is It RESTful?" (http://isitrestful.com/) to deal with all the engineers asking him that question :)

[colin_jack]

> Either way I don't think it matters. Just get it done. Clients do not care about URL structure, they just want their problem solved. I redid an app and prettified the urls (yes I know this is slightly off topic) and no one has commented on it.

REST doesn't really care about pretty URIs either, in fact one truism about REST is that people who spend a lot of time worrying about pretty URIs are probably missing the more important aspects of REST.

Oh and I agree with you, people can spend a long time coming up with pretty and hackable URIs and in my experience clients often just don't care (sometimes its worth the effort though).