RESTful delete strategy

Question

Let's say I have a resource that can have two different behaviors when delete is called

1. The resource is deleted.
2. The resource is moved to the recycle bin.

How would model it in a REST compliant way?

I thought about the following solution:

DELETE /myresource     

moves the resource to the recycle bin (default behavior)

DELETE /myresource?force-delete=true  

forces delete on the resource.

Is that REST compliant? I have never seen query parameters in the URL when calling DELETE, is that OK?

Answer 1

Your idea is fine, but I think a custom request header would be a little more appropriate. Query parameters are better suited to, well, parameters.

A custom request header would look something like this:

DELETE /myresource
X-Really-Delete: Yup

Answer 2

A pure REST strategy should prefer non changing resources. In my opinion, you are not changing the resource by appending a parameter, so it sounds like good strategy to me.

If you were to perform the same action like so:

DELETE /myresource.force

that would act like another resource, which wouldn't be optimal.