Designing GET for a Single Resource in REST APIs

In REST APIs, we often need to get a single resource. In this article, we explore how to structure those GET requests properly.

🧍‍♂️ Get a Single Account by ID

To get one specific account, use:

/accounts/{id}

Example:

/accounts/adoe

This will return the account with ID adoe.

You can apply the same idea to other resources, like:

/applications/872233

🧠 Get Resource(s) by Field Value

Sometimes you want to retrieve a resource or a small list of resources based on a specific field, like email or region. Instead of creating multiple endpoints, use query parameters.

✅ Good Practice: use query parameters

/accounts?email=adoe@company.com

This means: Get all accounts where email equals adoe@company.com

Another example:

/accounts?region=EMEA&role=admin

This means: Get accounts in EMEA region with admin role

You can combine multiple query parameters — the order doesn’t matter.

❌ Bad Practice: encoding fields in the path

Avoid things like:

/accounts/email/adoe@company.com

or

/accounts/region/EMEA

It breaks RESTful conventions and is harder to maintain.

⚠️ Special Characters in IDs

Sometimes IDs or field values contain characters like @, /, or &. Always URL-encode these to prevent errors. For example:

/accounts?email=adoe%40company.com

✅ Summary

To get a single resource or filter resources by field:

• Use /resource/{id} to fetch by unique ID
• Use /resource?field=value for flexible searches
• Never include filter values in the URL path
• Always encode special characters properly
• Stick to GET for safe, idempotent fetch operations