RESTful Soft Delete

Question

I'm trying to build a RESTful webapp wherein I utilize GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. But I had a question about the use of DELETE in this particular app.

A bit of background first:

My webapp manages generic entities that are also managed (and, it happens, always created) in another system. So within my webapp, each entity will be stored in the database with a unique key. But the way we will be accessing them through URLs is with the unique key of the other system.

A simple example will make this clear, I think. Take the URL /entity/1. This will display information for the entity with ID 1 in the other system, and not my own system. In fact, IDs in my system will be completely hidden. There will be no URL scheme for accessing the entity with ID of 1 in my own system.

Alright, so now that we know how my webapp is structured, let's return to deleting those entities.

There will be a way to 'delete' entities in my system, but I put quotes around it because it won't actually be deleting them from the database. Rather, it will flag them with a property that prevents it from appearing when you go to /entity/1.

Because of this, I feel like I should be using PUT ('deleting' in this way will be idempotent), since I am, from the perspective of the data, simply setting a property.

So, the question: does the RESTful approach have fidelity to the data (in which case it is clear that I am PUTing), or the representation of the data in the app (in which case it seems that I am DELETEing)?

Answer 1

You should use DELETE.

What you intend to do with your data is called "soft deleting": you set a flag and avoid flagged items from appearing. This is internal to your webapp and the user doesn't have to know that you're soft deleting instead of deleting or whatever you want to do. This is why you should use the DELETE verb.