REST (Representational state transfer)
From: Wikipedia
The software architectural style of the World Wide Web.
More precisely, an architectural style consisting of a coordinated set of architectural constraints applied to components, connectors, and data elements, within a distributed hypermedia system. REST ignores the details of component implementation and protocol syntax in order to focus on the roles of components, the constraints upon their interaction with other components, and their interpretation of significant data elements.
Through the application of REST architectural constraints certain architectural properties are induced:
- Performance
- Scalability
- Simplicity
- Modifiability
- Visibility
- Portability
- Reliability
To the extent that systems conform to the constraints of REST they can be called RESTful.
RESTful systems typically, but not always, communicate over HTTP with the same HTTP verbs. REST systems interface with external systems as web resources identified by Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), for example
/people/tom
, which can be operated upon using standard verbs such asDELETE
/people/tom
.