REST APIs
Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for designing networked applications. It has gained popularity due to its simplicity and the use of standard HTTP methods, which are understood by most developers. Let us learn about the design principles, use cases, and strengths and weaknesses of REST APIs.
Design principles of REST APIs
REST APIs are built around resources, which are any kind of object, data, or service that can be accessed by the client. A resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), and the API interacts with these resources using HTTP methods such as GET
, POST
, PUT
, DELETE
, and others. These methods correspond to create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations in database systems.
A key feature of REST is its statelessness. Each request from a client to a server must contain all the information needed to understand and process the request. This makes the server’s operations more predictable and reliable...