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A little backstory

I have to develop a web application for college. This web application has to do with managing different locations using google maps like pinning new locations adding custom descriptions and so on. The login part is done using facebook (login with facebook). The more interesting part would be that the queries (client-server) would have to be done by using REST.

The part that i try to understand

If i use a database to store my user's unique ID, their online status (online/offline) and somehow (didn't settle actually on the idea) to keep a JSON on the server that would contain each user's pinned locations, would all this actually be ok with the REST paradigm ?

I find mixed answers on the internet and i don't know how to think of the statelessness of the application correctly. A session would not be created but the credentials from the database would be necessary for the users to communicate with each other.

The other side of the question

Considering that i'm mistaken and i shouldn't use the database to store the credentials and locations like that, how am i supposed to keep all that data ? I'm thinking something like JSON cached client-side but what if my client changes the computer, wouldn't this mean that he loses all his data? (Also wouldn't this make MVC handicapped by not having a model?) How do i really keep track of all things.

Edeph
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1 Answers1

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You're making this way too hard on yourself, try to keep it simple since you probably have a deadline. REST is a way of using APIs with HTTP verbs like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. It says nothing about how to store the data behind your APIs.

As for storing the data, a database should be fine. Storing it as JSON in the db could work, but in the end you'll have to parse the json every time that you want to use it, so I would suggest that you store it in a DB in such a way that it can be read easily.

For a beginner (especially if you're doing this for a school project), I would definitely suggest that you set up a relational database like Microsoft SQL Database (Microsoft Stack), or a MySQL/PosGres Database (I think this is what they'd use in linux), but if you wanna skip the relational db approach (because it might not be all that "easy" to get going), you can always try a NoSQL database like MongoDB.

Relevant links to help:
http://rest.elkstein.org/ (REST explained)
http://www.restapitutorial.com/lessons/httpmethods.html (REST verbs)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database (what is a relational db)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization (Kinda the goal of relational db.. but note you can go too far...http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2010/12/02/over-normalization-is-bad-for-you/)
http://www.mongodb.com/nosql-explained (NoSQL explanation)

user1079703
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  • Thanks a lot! I do use a MySQL database (i use XAMPP). And the only reason I took it this way is because the pressure from our teacher is pretty big and she has high expectancies. – Edeph May 31 '14 at 17:24