如何在 REST API 中将多个 API 调用合并为一个调用

Question

For instance, if I have an API call http://localhost:3006/send-message?email=abc@mysite.com&password=xxxxxx&count=4&location=US and another API call http://localhost:3006/cancel-request?email=abc@mysite.com&password=xxxxxx&count=2&usernames=abc,xyz . So, can I merge these two calls into one by doing something like http://localhost:3006/send-message?email=abc@mysite.com&password=xxxxxx&count=4&location=US/cancel-request?count=2&usernames=abc,xyz . If Yes then how I can handle this in Node.js with express.

Answer 1

I'd suggest making these operations a POST instead of a GET. Then, you can have one URL for a multi-operation and you can have a JSON payload in the body that contains an array of operations and their parameters:

http://localhost:3006/multi-operation

With a JSON payload that parses to this:

[
   {
       operation: "send-message",
       email: "abc@mysite.com",
       password: "xxxxx",
       count: 4,
       location: "US"
   },
   {
       operation: "cancel-request",
       email: "abc@mysite.com",
       password: "xxxxx",
       count: 2,
       usernames: ["abc","xyz"]
   }
]

This would also only be sending sensitive information such as passwords in the body of the request which is generally considered safer than putting them in the URL (where they might get logged by various infrastructure).

Note: In a REST API design, a GET request is not supposed to have "side-effects". It's supposed to retrieve some resource. Calling it 0 times, 1 time or 10 times should have the same effect on the server/world. So, independent of the desire to specify multiple operations in one API call, neither of these operations should have been a GET operation anyway because they both have side effects (they cause some change to occur). So, these should likely be POST operations. There are lots of good articles on when to use GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, etc... in a REST API. If you're confused by this, you can start with these articles or find many others with a search:

https://restfulapi.net/http-methods/

https://www.restapitutorial.com/lessons/httpmethods.html