Resource-oriented Architecture - Guidelines For Clarification

Guidelines For Clarification

The Resource Oriented Architecture as documented by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby gives concrete advice on specific technical details. Naming these collections of guidelines "Resource Oriented Architecture" may allow developers to discuss the benefits of an architecture in the context of ROA.

Example guidelines include:

• Query string parameters are appropriate if they are inputs to a Resource which is an algorithm
  • Otherwise, these values should be moved into the URI
• Prefer pragmatic uses of putting data into URI, instead of using HTTP Headers
  • A resource can use file extension in the URI, instead of Content-Type negotiation
• RPC-style APIs are avoided in favor of Resources and protocols
• A representation of a resource should have many links to the other Resources in the application, so that a client can discover state transitions
• URI templates provide the technology behind specifying families of URI to clients.