How to retrieve values from an object selected by REST API using JSON?

Question

I'm using a REST API in back-end java to talk to javascript on front-end, everything through JSON. I have an entity called Store that have some private String attributes. There's also a class called Repo containing all previously inserted Store . I'm capable of retrieve a list with all Store objects from Repo containing all private Strings. Now I added a list of Fridge to the class Store , where Fridge is a class with simple private String attributes.

How I'm supposed to retrieve Fridge 's list from some Store object using REST API? Should I create a new route that receives a JSON Store and send back a Fridge 's list? Or I should create a route receiving 2 JSON objects, the first being my Store object and the second a simple string specifying what to send back( Store attributes or Fridge 's list)?

I'm newbie to REST API and JSON and I really don't know the development pattern around this technologies.

Answer 1

Relationship between Store and Fridge is important here and that is what will drive on how you will retrieve Fridge. From what I understand, a single store contains a list of Fridges, which means there is a one to many relationship between store and Fridge. From coding perspective, you can define a new REST API, that takes the Store ID (primary key) as input and in response returns the list of Fridges in that store.

@Get
@Path("/fridges")
public Fridge[] getFridges(@PathParam int storeID){
   //implementation
   //retrieve store object
   //store object will have your list of Fridges..
  //just return list of fridges..
}

Using JSON or XML is irrelevant.