REST, API - confusion

[eluser]tinawina[/eluser]
Ok - I was in over my head before. Now I'm WAY in over my head.

Thanks Jay - you give me some keywords to use in my next google excursion.

What you say seems right re: choosing to use nouns over verbs or vice versa. It seems to me we have some easily noun-able resources -- www..../research, www..../comments, www...../members, www..../member/profile/screen_name. I run into trouble when I try to think about things like searching or browsing. In that case, do we go with /research/search or is /search/research the better way to go. Is this truly just personal preference? Or is there a reason to use one over the other?

Also - am I correct in thinking about our site as two different streams of outgoing resources? One stream: people visiting the site and more than likely interacting with our "noun-ables". The other stream: other systems requesting resources from our site and so probably needing our "verbs", eg., getResearch (to use in our application somewhere else)? Are we architecting out two separate things -- a website and an API? Does that even make sense? Do you get a sense as to how much I'm overthinking this??

Thanks again!

[EDIT] Here's a link to a blog post on REST that was written in 2005 and sustained comments through 8/2007. Some good links, insights. http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/11/2...gets-rest/