# Theory/opinion question: What are good RESTful archive URLs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 13, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/theory-opinion-question-what-are-good-restful-archive-urls/157552 "2009-01-13T02:31:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sven)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/theory-opinion-question-what-are-good-restful-archive-urls/157552/1 "2009-01-13T02:31:42Z")
Suppose I have a weblog application with RESTful resources accessible at the following URLs: GET /posts GET /posts/1 GET /categories/ GET /categories/1 GET /categories/1/posts As implemented the semantics of /posts and /categories/1/posts are such that they show “current” posts, with current defined to be a rolling window of a certain duration. My question is this: what do you think is the best way to represent the archives of older posts as RESTful resources? We could do this: GET /posts/archives GET /categories/1/posts/archives or this: GET /archives/posts GET /archives/categories/1/posts or this: GET /archived\_posts/ GET /categories/1/archived\_posts or, undoubtedly, others. What do you think is the most defensible approach? Note: if you don’t like the idea of having GET /posts return only “current” posts then you can perfectly well invert my question. Let GET /posts retrieve the full set of all posts known to the system. What then is a good RESTful representation that limits results to “current” posts? Thanks in advance for your thoughts, Sven ---
**Author:** ![sven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sven)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 10:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/theory-opinion-question-what-are-good-restful-archive-urls/157552/2 "2009-01-13T22:37:32Z")
Quoting S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > As implemented the semantics of /posts and /categories/1/posts are > such that they show “current” posts, with current defined to be a > rolling window of a certain duration. GET /posts/1.html # “current” posts GET /posts/1.xml # all posts The former is presumably a browser with a human in front of it. The latter is another app that can define “current” for itself it it wants. Same applies to other non-human readable formats, e.g., json. Just my $0.02USD, Jeffrey