I'm developing a json rest web service that will be consumed from a single web page app built with backbone.js
This API will let the consumer upload files related to some entity, like pdf reports related to a project
Googling around and doing some research at stack overflow I came with these possible approaches:
First approach: base64 encoded data field
POST: /api/projects/234/reports
{
author: 'xxxx',
abstract: 'xxxx',
filename: 'xxxx',
filesize: 222,
content: '<base64 encoded binary data>'
}
Second approach: multipart form post:
POST: /api/projects/234/reports
{
author: 'xxxx',
abstract: 'xxxx',
}
as a response I'll get a report id, and with that I shall issue another post
POST: /api/projects/234/reports/1/content
enctype=multipart/form-data
and then just send the binary data
(have a look at this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3938816/47633)
Third approach: post the binary data to a separate resource and save the href
first I generate a random key at the client and post the binary content there
POST: /api/files/E4304205-29B7-48EE-A359-74250E19EFC4
enctype=multipart/form-data
and then
POST: /api/projects/234/reports
{
author: 'xxxx',
abstract: 'xxxx',
filename: 'xxxx',
filesize: 222,
href: '/api/files/E4304205-29B7-48EE-A359-74250E19EFC4'
}
(see this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4032079/47633)
I just wanted to know if there's any other approach I could use, the pros/cons of each, and if there's any established way to deal with this kind of requirements
the big con I see to the first approach, is that I have to fully load and base64 encode the file on the client
some useful resources:
See Question&Answers more detail:
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