Jersey: Display possible actions on a resource

Question

I am using the Jersey implementation of JAX-RS spec to develop RESTful web services. There is a url that can uniquely identify a resource. Is there a way to let know the user of the RESTful services, the possible actions that can be performed on the resource? For example,

Resource name - host1

http://localhost:8080/state-fetcher/rest/object/host1/actions

This should give me all the possible actions that can be performed on the resource - {actions: [GET, POST, DELETE]}

Thanks!

Answer 1

Use the OPTIONS HTTP method on the resource. You will get the allowed methods in Allow header, for example: Allow: GET, HEAD, PUT and in a payload you will find the fragment of wadl associeted with the specified resource.

Answer 2

A RESTful service itself is inteded to be self- descriptive! If the user performs a request, the REST service should send back a list of possible links, which can be performed next, along with the response. That's the motivation and general concept of a RESTful serivice. If you provide a graphical WebClient, you just need to provide the initial link (e.g. http:\example.com\restful), and the response sends back a list of valid links which just needs to be visualized within the GUI. Usually the webservice only provides those links which are accessible in terms of the users role. (This is not a security feature!!! It just prevents that unecessary links are displayed) Otherwise the OPTION method of the HTTP protocol provides information concerning the supported protocol methods.