title: A RESTful singleton resource
body: <p>I'm coming from the RPC world but currently investigating if using REST is a good idea for my project. As for as I understand from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer#RESTful_web_services">Wikipedia</a> the basic idea of RESTful services is to provide access to collections and their individual elements.</p>
  
  <p>In my case the server would be a measuring instrument. I must be able to start, stop, and pause the measurement routine, and read the data at any time.</p>
  
  <p>Currently, I'm considering the following:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><strong>POST /measure</strong> (start measurement, this continues until stopped by the user)</li>
  <li><strong>PUT /measure</strong> pause=true/false (pause/unpause)</li>
  <li><strong>DELETE /measure</strong> (stop)</li>
  <li><strong>GET /measure</strong> (get measurement data)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>However, I'm not sure if this fits the REST model, since I don't really work with collections or elements here.</p>
  
  <p>My question: How would I access a singleton resource and do the start/stop requests to the server break the RESTful stateless constraint?</p>