title: How to add a VersionOne Asset with no linked asset
body: <p>This is a follow-on question from "<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23938833/adding-a-versionone-expression-using-the-rest-api">Adding a VersionOne expression using the REST API</a>"...</p>
  
  <p>I am trying to add an Expression (comment) to a story in VersionOne. I can now do this (with some help - see original post), but I have a related question:</p>
  
  <p>In VersionOne, each Story has a Number (e.g. "B-01123") and a Name (e.g. "Fix ProcVars REST functionality"). It can be queried on these things using e.g:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;Server Base URI&gt;/rest-1.v1/Data/Story?sel=Name,Number&amp;where=Number='B-01123'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, internally, all VersionOne assets have an OID - for instance, the above story might have an OID of "Story:2017". This is the unique asset identifier.</p>
  
  <p>It appears that to add an Expression or a Link to a Story, you need to know the OID of the Story, because when adding something, you need to typically include the following the in the POSTed XML:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;Relation name="Asset" act="set"&gt;
      &lt;Asset href="&lt;Server Base URI&gt;/rest-1.v1/Data/Story/2017" idref="Story:2017" /&gt;
  &lt;/Relation&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Of course, you can perform a query (like the above) to get an XML response which includes the OID, and then parse it out from the XML and pass it in a new request. However, this is a two-part task, and is a huge hassle.</p>
  
  <p>Is it possible to e.g. add a Link or an Expression to a Story where all you know is the Story Number (the user-visible bit)?</p>