From: Chris Davies <chris-usenet@...>
Date: 2009-03-20T21:02:22+09:00
Subject: REST vs Parameters (Rails)

I'm still trying to get my head around REST based URIs vs slightly more
conventional cgi script with ?parameters. I think I'm probably making
heavier weather of it than I need to, but I was hoping one of you could
help me out with some understanding...

Consider a situation where I need to generate some reports from a database
(HTML, XML, whatever; it doesn't matter).

Conventionally I might have created a script called report.cgi that took
a number of parameters: { datefrom, dateto, category }, so that I could
obtain a report of, say, sales results across a date range:

    report.cgi?datefrom=20090101;dateto=20090320;category=sales


How could/should I represent a URI for this kind of query using the
Rails paradigm?

Many thanks from a confused Rails learner!
Chris