# Should you return all resources by default (when no filter specified) **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [March 13, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/should-you-return-all-resources-by-default-when-no-filter-specified/1233 "2018-03-13T15:13:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SierraRomeo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71c47a/32.png) [@SierraRomeo](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/SierraRomeo)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/should-you-return-all-resources-by-default-when-no-filter-specified/1233/1 "2018-03-13T15:13:15Z")
Hi there, Let’s say I use a soft delete strategy with a status which could be published or trashed. By default (without specifying a filter) I would like to return all posts which are published. Is that allowed or should I call /posts?filter[status]=published ? I would prefer to just get /posts, and have only the published ones, and then get /posts?filter[status]=trashed to get only the trashed ones, or get /posts?filter[status]=all to get everything. I cannot find an answer to this in the spec. What do you think? Thanx ---
**Author:** ![michaelhibay](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discuss.jsonapi.org/michaelhibay/32/405_2.png) [@michaelhibay](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/michaelhibay)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 9:06pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/should-you-return-all-resources-by-default-when-no-filter-specified/1233/2 "2018-03-13T21:06:12Z")
I would be wary of doing things which are not immediately intuitive to the API consumer. You are under no responsibility to display any resources you don’t want to, but I would make sure you properly convey this behavior to consumers otherwise you will have a lot of confused and annoyed developers on your hands. Unless you have a solid, very apparent, means to show this (like vocabulary driven hypermedia) and all clients are using a discovery mechanism, I would suggest instead returning some links to the “root” of each filtered set with the filter strategy. ---
**Author:** ![SierraRomeo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71c47a/32.png) [@SierraRomeo](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/SierraRomeo)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 9:36am UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/should-you-return-all-resources-by-default-when-no-filter-specified/1233/3 "2018-03-21T09:36:13Z")
Hi Michael, thanx for getting back to me. The reason behind this is that 99% of the time, the API should return only resources that are published. So I believe that **/posts** by default should return the same thing as **/posts?filter[status]=published** I don’t want 99% of the calls to the API to include a filter that could be considered default and thus avoided. For the 1%, the call could be **?filter[status]=trashed** or **?filter[status]=all** I don’t see any problems in doing so but you are right, I have to convey the information to the developers. But I’m curious, what do you mean by returning some links to the “root” of each filtered set with the filter strategy. ---
**Author:** ![michaelhibay](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discuss.jsonapi.org/michaelhibay/32/405_2.png) [@michaelhibay](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/michaelhibay)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 7:59pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/should-you-return-all-resources-by-default-when-no-filter-specified/1233/4 "2018-06-25T19:59:10Z")
Wow, apologies for dropping the ball on this response. I’m not sure if this will help so long after you’re question but I’ll do it anyway just in case. ```auto GET /posts 200 OK { "links":{ "published":"http://example.org/posts?filter[status]=published", "trashed":"http://example.org/posts?filter[status]=trashed", "all":"http://example.org/posts?filter[status]=all" } } ```