Query parameter with http PUT method - REST API

Question

I am passing request object and path variables in my http PUT method to update a record. Is it ok to pass additional data (such as timestamp) as query parameters which i want to save in the final record that has on additional field(say timestamp) as compared to request object ?

Answer 1

Is it ok to pass additional data (such as timestamp) as query parameters which i want to save in the final record that has on additional field(say timestamp) as compared to request object ?

Short answer: that probably doesn't mean what you think it does.

Is it OK to use query parameters in a PUT request? Absolutely. Query parameters are just another piece of the resource identifier.

/15f3221f-ee3b-4155-bc75-f80855a9187e/abc
/15f3221f-ee3b-4155-bc75-f80855a9187e?abc

Those are two different resource identifiers, and the machines won't assume that they identify the same resource, but all of the http methods that would apply to one would also apply to the other, and mean the same thing.

There's nothing magic about abc of course, you could use a timestamp there

/15f3221f-ee3b-4155-bc75-f80855a9187e?1970-01-01

Changing the timestamp changes the identifier; as far as general purpose components are concerned, these next two examples identify different resources

/15f3221f-ee3b-4155-bc75-f80855a9187e?1970-01-01
/15f3221f-ee3b-4155-bc75-f80855a9187e?1970-01-02

You might imagine them as two different pages of a desktop calendar. Modifying the list of appointments in your 1970-01-02 document shouldn't change your 1970-01-01 calendar at all.

Metadata about a representation would normally be embedded within the representation itself (think HEAD element in an HTML document) or in the HTTP Headers. As far as I can tell, we don't have a standardized header that matches the semantics you want.

All that said: the server has a LOT of freedom in how it interprets a request to update the representation of /15f3221f-ee3b-4155-bc75-f80855a9187e?1970-01-02. For instance, the updating of that resource might also update the representations of many other resources.

(Do keep in mind caching, though - there are only a limited number of ways we can advise a general purpose client that some cached representations have been invalidated by a request.)