REST

What is REST

Representational State Transfer

So REST is essentially a set of constraints, the general architecture resembles the Web.

Constraints

The Client - Server constraint

• Enforces a separation of concerns
• Allows independent evolution of
  • Clients
    • such like browsers
  • Servers

The stateles constraint

• Client-Server communication must be stateless between requests
• A request should contain all necessary data for the Server to complete it
• All session data should be returned to the client at the end of each Request
• The client side must contain all the data related to the session

The cache constraint

• Responses from the server are explicitly labeled as cacheable or non-cacheable
• Requests pass through a cache component
• The goal is to match the infrastructure of the existen Web infrastructure

The Uniform constrant constraint

• The service and all clients must share a single uniform technical interface
• To be reusable by a wide range of clients and over a broad range of interactions
• It needs to provide generic, high-level, abstract capabilities

The Layered System Constraint

• Builds on Client-Server to allow for intermediaries / middleware
• These intermediaries must be transparent
• Information Hiding
  • Simplifies distributed architecture

Terminology

• Resourece
  • Any source of information, that can be refer to via a URI
• Representation
  • The current state of the resource in a specific format
    • xml
    • json
• Hypermedia Type
  • Specific format for the representation
  • we can build our own types
  • JSON by itself is not Hypermedia