/courses/{course}/contacts?type={contact_type}

Collection/Resource/Sub-Collection?Query

GET

Return a modified collection based on the query parameter's value.

This will return all the contacts of the given course that are of contact type X.

On each newly added query parameter, evaluate if it should be structured as a sub-collection in the URI.

POST

Query parameters are rarely used to modify the newly added resource or change the endpoint's behaviour.

Don't pass query parameters in POST requests. Pass data fields as POST parameters instead of query parameters.

This is very uncommon and usually not recommended.

PUT

Query parameters are rarely used to modify the newly added resource or change the endpoint's behaviour.

It should be implied that this would replace the entire subset of contacts that match the query.

Don't pass query parameters in PUT requests. Pass data fields as PUT parameters instead of query parameters.

This is uncommon and not recommended.

PATCH

Query parameters are used to modify the newly added resource or change the endpoint's behaviour.

This would imply modifying a subset of data matching the query.

For example, reordering a large dataset of a course's contacts of a specific type (faster than looping PUT requests).

This is uncommon and not recommended because it's difficult to interpret what the endpoint is doing based on the URI alone.

DELETE

Deletes all entities that match the query parameter.

For example, delete all the contacts of the given course that are of contact type X.

Use with care.