What you need to know about REST

If you're in software industry you surely have heard about REST. You might not know what it actually even means but you might know its about designing an API to consume network calls.

Representational state transfer protocol (REST) is an architectural style for designing networked application using simple* HTML protocols. REST relies on stateless, client-server architecture. You can think of it as a light weight web service. It is platform and language independent protocol.

Difference between SOAP and REST

Check this nice stackoverflow post on this

Designing REST API

APIs exposes functionality of an application or a service.

* : I used simple with comparison to CORBA, RPC and SOAP which are bit complex to implement nowadays.

COAP (COnstrained Application Protocol)
Protocol intended to use in simple electronic devices that allow them to communicate over the internet. It's an application layer protocol. It uses UDP protocol (Check difference between TCP and UDP)
http://www.slideshare.net/jvermillard/co-ap

Sources

http://rest.elkstein.org/

http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/a-beginners-guide-to-http-and-rest--net-16340

Designing REST APIs
The Increasing importance of APIs in web development 
Web API growing trends 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7551/best-practices-for-securing-a-rest-api-web-service



last updated October 2014