[andrewstuart2]

Which endpoint (or resource locator) you hit probably shouldn't dictate the representation type you get back. That's what the `Accept:` headers should be used for. If you hit it with a browser, you'd expect to get back some html version of the same resource.

If you use "Accept:application/json", then you should expect to get JSON back. Etc.

[davidism]

A fair point. I was referring to the api being separate from the frontend, not what the api is returning. But I could see someone designing their application the way you describe.

[treve]

And when someone does design their application in that manner, the various benefits of doing things 'right' start to pay off.

If a resource or result is addressable it means that a 3rd party can build an API that integrates with my API and link straight to results of certain queries.

Granted that this would be hard in the context of the dropbox API, because they already 'break' a lot other rules.

[davidism]

Yes, if reusable/sharable queries are something you want, then you don't really have a choice but to expose an API for creating and retrieving them. Not sure if you're trying to make some other point related to the `Accept:` header the parent comment was about.