ACM Queue - Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise - Social boo...

Dogear: An Example of REST

REST specifies that a given resource be represented by a stable URI (uniform resource identifier), such that the same URI will mean the same thing over time. This implies that the current state of an application must depend entirely on the URI, and not on opaque, hidden conditions such as cookies. The dogear application state consists of a set of constraints on which bookmarks are currently visible, an output format, a current page number, and the number of links per page.

Output Format

The first element of a dogear URL path selects the desired output format. Currently implemented formats include:

* /html—the Web site itself
* /rss—RSS 2.02
* /atom—Atom 1.03
* js—a JavaScript snippet, which, when evaluated, causes HTML to be emitted on the including page
* /xbel—the XML Bookmark Exchange Language4 

Each of the machine-readable formats is extended, via XML namespaces, to include dogear-specific meta-data.
Programmatic read/write access to one’s own bookmarks is provided by an HTTP API, which resides at /api. Bookmarks are created and modified via HTTP POST using simple name=value query parameters to provide bookmark title, URL, and tags. Bookmarks may be deleted by calling /api?url=url with HTTP DELETE.

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