In RESTful API Design, does it have to GET by Id?

Question

In the standard RESTful API, we usually have GET() ( api/users ) to return all records for the resource and a GET(id) (( api/users/{id} ))to return one record.

But sometimes, we want to get one record but not by Id . For example, a GetByName(username) or GetByEmail(email) .

We certainly don't want to call api/users to return everything and filter out the record we need at the client side.

Some developers implemented multiple API points like:

api/users/byname/{username}
api/users/byemail/{email}

Is it a good practice? Or is there a better, a more RESTful way to do that?

Answer 1

I'm working on my first RESTful API ever, so I don't think I'm an expert by any means, but I believe generally your endpoint is supposed to look like

api/users?email="me@me.com"

where you have an index view and you can just send it params