Is there a correct way to pass parameters to search?

Question

I am making a Restfull application and it occurred to me the following doubt:

"Am I passing parameters in the correct way for this method?"

The method in question is this:

[HttpGet("{initial}&{final}")]
        public ActionResult<IEnumerable<SalesRecord>> getAllSR(DateTime? initial, DateTime? final)
        {

            return _srService.findByDate(initial, final);
        }

This method gets an initial date and a final date for me to return a Salesrecord list by following my service criteria...

According to GET this will be my URL:

localhost:5001/api/Salesrecord/2018-10-20&2018-10-31

Everything works just fine! However, something seems wrong because it is very simple to separate two dates with only one "&", is there any rule that I should follow as to how to pass parameters in a Restfull API? (for specific search)

Answer 1

Following the good practice of a HTTP GET you would probably need:

• Use the noun in the plural, where Salesrecord become Salesrecords
• Parameterize dates as filters for the Salesrecords feature: /SalesRecords?fromDate=2018-01-01&toDate=2018-12-31

So in your controller you would have:

[HttpGet]
[Route("/SalesRecords")]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<SalesRecord>> GetSalesRecords(DateTime? fromDate, DateTime? toDate)
{
    return _srService.findByDate(fromDate, toDate);
}

Or "manually formatting" the route:

[HttpGet]
[Route("/SalesRecords?fromDate={fromDate}&toDate={toDate}")]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<SalesRecord>> GetSalesRecords(DateTime? fromDate, DateTime? toDate)
{
    return _srService.findByDate(fromDate, toDate);
}