What is REST

What is REST

   June 26, 2021       Ravi Yasas

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REST

Introduction

• Stands for Representational State Transfer.
• REST is a web standards-based architecture that uses the HTTP protocol (port 80) for data communication.
• Uses HTTP methods for data communication 
• REST server simply provides access to resources and client access and presents the resource.
• REST is stateless, so there is no session.
• REST uses various representations like TXT, JSON, XML...etc to represent resources.

Methods in REST

• POST
• Sends data to the server for creating a new resource, maybe an entity. Often used when uploading a file or submitting a web form.
• GET 
• Retrieves data from the server. Should have no other effect.
• PUT 
• Similar to POST, but used to replace an existing entity.
• PATCH
• Similar to PUT, but used to update only certain fields within an existing entity.
• DELETE 
• Removes data from the server.
• TRACE 
• Provides a way to test what the server receives. It simply returns what was sent.
• OPTIONS 
• This allows a client to get information about the request methods supported by a service. 
• The relevant response header is Allow with supported methods.
• HEAD 
• This returns only the response headers.
• CONNECT 
• Used by browser when it knows it talks to a proxy and the final URI begins with https://. 
• The intent of CONNECT is to allow end-to-end encrypted TLS sessions, so the data is unreadable to a proxy.

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