title: Advice on http-method overloading in REST
body: <p>I've used a regular expression in @Path to achieve overloading and at first I thought it was really neat, but overloading methods is usually not good practice. Does the same apply to RESTful web services? Is there a better way to achieve this using JAX-RS?</p>
  
  <p>So I can now call my getProject REST service by /project/ProjectNumber1000 or /project/12345</p>
  
  <pre><code>@Path("/project")
  public class ProjectPropertiesResource
  {
      @GET
      @Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
      @Path("/{name : [a-zA-Z]+}")
      public Response getProjectPropertiesByName(@PathParam("name") String name)
      {
           ...
      }
  
      @GET
      @Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
      @Path("/{id : \\d+}")
      public Response getProjectPropertiesById(@PathParam("id") long id)
      {
           ...
      }
  }
  </code></pre>