RESTFul pattern url for enable and disable [closed]

Question

What's the RESTFul pattern for enabling and disabling a system user.

Example: a DELETE request to /users/123 and PATCH/UPDATE request to /users/123

Or should I use /user/enable/123 using PUT and /user/disable/123 using DELETE?

Answer 1

First of all: DELETE always removes a resource. So it cannot be used to change a value. Read more about the different Http methods and how they are supposed to used here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231

You can solve this in three different ways. Whatever fits you best.

Update user object

Another approach would be by updating the User resource. In this case you could send a PUT /users/123 with a body that contains the full updated user object.

Partial update of user object

If you define that you are allowed to do partial updates (partial means you only need to send the changed values which will be merged in to the existing user object) you can send a PATCH /users/123 containing a json with {enabled:true}. This is usually a bit trickier to handle on the backend.

Directly set enabled property (not recommended)

enabled is a property of a User. There for you can address this property directly in your URL. You can use PUT /users/123/enabled with a body that contains true or false. To this approach, also see @Roman Vottner comment below