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What is the best way to design a RESTful resource for an object with a composite id? For example, suppose I have a GET /people resource for getting a list of person records. A person doesn't have a single id; instead, it is identified by firstName, lastName, and birthdate. How should I design the resource to get a single person?

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    By the way, although its very rare, two person with the same name, can have the same bithday. So this is quite a poor choice for a PK. Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 15:15
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    This is a hypothetical example. Please operate under the assumption that firstName, lastName, and birthdate guarantee uniqueness. Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 15:21
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    I agree with @jwzirilli - you should use a mechanism that (almost) guarantees the uniqueness of a person. The social security number f.e. would be such a number for persons. If in your system a combination of firstName, lastName and birthday is guaranteed to create a unique identifier, you could also use a matrix-parameter: GET /people;firstName=John;lastName=Smith;birthday=1973-12-01 Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 15:53

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I would use one of the following variations:

GET /people/John/Smith/1973-12-01

or

GET /people/John,Smith,1973-12-01
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As already mentioned in the comments, if you don't have a single identifier that ensure uniqueness, you could consider matrix variables:

GET /people;firstname=John;lastname=Smith;birthday=1973-12-01
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What about :

GET /people/firstName/X/lastName/Y/birthdate/AAAA-MM-DD
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