title: Is good practice with REST APIs to assume default values when values are not present?
body: <p>An application let others applications to get weather information for a region. This application  implements a <code>REST API</code> and <code>JSON</code> objects to represent the resources and the users indicates the region via <code>region</code> attribute in a JSON object in the request.</p>
  <p>It is working this way: <strong>if the region is not indicated in the request, this is if the attribute is not present in the <code>JSON</code> or it has <code>null</code> value</strong>, the application assumes region is &quot;Tenesse&quot; (some region by default). Is this a good practice? What is the disadvantage of doing this against making the <code>region</code> a required attribute and explicitly indicates the region?</p>