While handling routing or sending requests, we may need to pass dynamic data as part of the URL. There are two ways to pass dynamic data with the URL: Path segments and Query params.
Path segments
Path segments are the parts of a URL that come after the domain name and are separated by slashes. Path segments can be static or dynamic.
For example, when retrieving product details in SmileCart, we use a URL like this: https://smile-cart-backend-staging.neetodeployapp.com/products/:slug. Here, products is the static path segment and slug is the dynamic path segment. The slug can take any string value.
A URL can also have multiple path segments. For example,
https://example.com/api/user/:id/task/:task_id
Path segments are preferred when searching/finding a specific resource.
Query parameters
Query parameters are key-value pairs added to the end of a URL. They are separated from the base URL by a question mark ?, and each pair is separated by an ampersand & symbol.
For example, to fetch the product list we use a URL like this:
https://smile-cart-backend-staging.neetodeployapp.com/products?search_term=mac&page=1&page_size=8
Here, the keys are search_term, page, and page_size, and the values are mac, 1, and 8, respectively.
Query parameters are preferred when you want to sort or filter items.
