Django rest framework: correctly handle incoming array of model ids

Question

I have a question about REST design in general and specifically what the best way to implement a solution is in Django Rest Framework. Here it the situation:

Say I have an app for keeping track of albums that the user likes. In the browser, the user sees a list of albums and each one has a check box next to it. Checking the box means you like the album. At the bottom of the page is a submit button.

I want the submit button to initiate an AJAX request that sends tp my API endpoint a list of the ids (as in, the Djano model ids) of the albums that are liked by the user.

My question is, is this a standard approach for doing this sort of thing (I am new to web stuff and REST in particular). In other words, is there a better way to handle the transmission of these data than to send an array of ids like this? As a corollary, if this is an alright approach, how does one implement this in Django Rest Framework in a way which is consistent with its intended methodology.

I am keeping this question a little vague (not presenting any code for the album serializer, for example) intentionally because I am looking to learn some fundamentals, not to debug a particular piece of code.

Thanks a lot in advance!

000 · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-29 05:45:26Z

2

Consider the upvote button to the left. When you click it, a request may be sent to stackoverflow.com/question/12345/upvote. It creates an "action resource" on the db, so later you can go to your user profile and check out the list of actions you took.

You can consider doing the same thing for your application. It may be a better user experience to have immediate action taken like SO, or a "batch" request like with gmail's check boxes.

answered Apr 29, 2015 at 5:45

000

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1 Comment

Joshua Gevirtz Over a year ago

I wondered about this approach. I see its upsides, but there is an additional cost in the extra ajax requests. I assumed it would be preferred to send fewer requests when possible.

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