Usually used for long running queries but sometimes appropriate for this problem is creating a "query" resource via POST after which you have a URI for the resu

Usually used for long running queries but sometimes appropriate for this problem is creating a "query" resource via POST after which you have a URI for the results: POST /queries {"query": "..."} 201 Created Location: /queries/1001 GET the results: GET /queries/1001 {"results": ...} You could optionally return results in the POST response too but I'm unsure whether that strictly conforms to the HTTP spec or not.