config same route path for 2 methods that receive different params

Question

I have a controller, that have some functions.

My problem is that i wish to do:

GET     /v1.0/products          @controllers.ProductController.getProductsByCategory(lang: String ?="en_US", t:String, cat:String, start: Int ?=0, maxresults:Int ?=100, sort:String  ?="rank", order:String ?="asc")  
GET     /v1.0/products          @controllers.ProductController.getProducts(lang: String ?="en_US", t: String, ids: String)

I have the 2 functions in the controller:

def getProducts(lang: String, t: String, ids: String) = Action { ... code.. }

and

def getProductsByCategory(lang: String, t: String, cat:String, start: Int, maxResults:Int, sort:String, order:String) = Action { ... Code ...}

This does not work. I must define the route like this:

GET     /v1.0/products/bycategory           @controllers.ProductController.getProductsByCategory(lang: String ?="en_US", t:String, cat:String, start: Int ?=0, maxresults:Int ?=100, sort:String  ?="rank", order:String ?="asc")  
GET     /v1.0/products          @controllers.ProductController.getProducts(lang: String ?="en_US", t: String, ids: String)

Is there a way to achieve this without adding "bycategory" in the path ?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can't use two routes with the same path an type (credits goes to Haris, who wrote that already), but you can make better usage of router, I'd use is like (pseudo code)

GET /products                 getAllProducts()
GET /products/:catId          getProductsByCat(catId)
GET /products/:catId/:id      getSingleProductWithinCat(catId, id)

So you'll have i.e. /products > /products/toys > /products/toys/rc-plane

Of course you can still add your optional params to it:

GET /products/toys?start=10&maxresults=250

Remember that these are GET routes = and it's normal that normal user will try to modify it manually to fasten the search, so if /products/toys/rc-plane won't satisfy him, he'll try first to go level up to /products/toys again

Answer 2

One way to do this is having one method, for fetching products, e.g.

GET     /v1.0/products          @controllers.ProductController.getProducts(lang: String ?="en_US", t:String, cat:String ?= "", start: Int ?=0, maxresults:Int ?=100, sort:String  ?="rank", order:String ?="asc")

where you set that the default category is none/null. In cases you need all products, you leave it as the default, e.g.

http://myhost/v1.0/products

and in cases you need the category

http://myhost/v1.0/products?category=hotsauces