Create single and multiple resources using restful HTTP

Question

In my API server I have this route defined:

POST /categories 

To create one category you do:

POST /categories {"name": "Books"} 

I thought that if you want to create multiple categories, then you could do:

POST /categories [{"name": "Books"}, {"name": "Games"}] 

I just wanna confirm that this is a good practice for Restful HTTP API.

Or should one have a

POST /bulk 

for allowing them to do whatever operations at once (Creating, Reading, Updating and Deleting)?

Answer 1

In true REST, you should probably POST this in multiple separate calls. The reason is that each one will result in a new representation. How would you expect to get that back otherwise.

Each post should return the resultant resource location:

POST -> New Resource Location POST -> New Resource Location ... 

However, if you need a bulk, then create a bulk. Be dogmatic where possible, but if not, pragmatism gets the job done. If you get too hung up on dogmatism, then you never get anything done.

Here is a similar question

Here is one that suggests HTTP Pipelining to make this more efficient