Unlike SOAP, REST is an architectural style. It has no protocols or standards of its own. It relies on URLs and HTTP verbs, such as POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE, in order to establish a message exchange process. The lack of standard makes it somewhat challenging to talk about, as various REST service implementations may present a client with different ways to consume services. When it comes to juggling data back and forth, we are free to choose over JSON, XML, or any other format we prefer. The simplicity and lightweightness of JSON made it a popular choice among many users and frameworks.
Loosely speaking, the very act of opening a web page in the browser can be interpreted as a REST call, where the browser acts as a client and server acts as a REST service. Unlike browser pages that may involve cookies and sessions, REST relies on stateless...
