RESTful Web Services
A RESTful web service (also called a RESTful web API) is a web service implemented using HTTP and the principles of REST. It is a collection of resources, with four defined aspects:
- the base URI for the web service, such as
http://example.com/resources/ - the Internet media type of the data supported by the web service. This is often XML but can be any other valid Internet media type provided that it is a valid hypertext standard.
- the set of operations supported by the web service using HTTP methods (e.g., GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE).
- The API must be hypertext driven.
The following table shows how the HTTP methods are typically used to implement a web service.
| Resource | GET | PUT | POST | DELETE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Collection URI, such as http://example.com/resources/ |
List the URIs and perhaps other details of the collection's members. | Replace the entire collection with another collection. | Create a new entry in the collection. The new entry's URL is assigned automatically and is usually returned by the operation. | Delete the entire collection. |
Element URI, such as http://example.com/resources/item17 |
Retrieve a representation of the addressed member of the collection, expressed in an appropriate Internet media type. | Replace the addressed member of the collection, or if it doesn't exist, create it. | Not generally used. Treat the addressed member as a collection in its own right and create a new entry in it. | Delete the addressed member of the collection. |
The PUT and DELETE methods are idempotent methods. The GET method is a safe method (or nullipotent), meaning that calling it produces no side-effects.
Unlike SOAP-based web services, there is no "official" standard for RESTful web services. This is because REST is an architectural style, unlike SOAP, which is a protocol. Even though REST is not a standard, a RESTful implementation such as the Web can use standards like HTTP, URI, XML, etc.
Read more about this topic: Representational State Transfer
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