APIs are reusable libraries that can be shared between different applications and can be made available via REST services (in which case, they are referred to asRESTful APIs).
Representational State Transfer (REST) was introduced by Roy Fielding in 2000.
REST is an architectural style that is made up ofconstraints. Altogether there are six constraints that should be considered when writing REST services. These constraints are as follows:
- Uniform interface: This is used to identify resources, and it manipulates these resources through representation. Messages use hypermedia and are self-descriptive. Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS) is utilized to contain information about what operation can be carried out next by the client.
- Client-server: This constraint utilizes information hiding through encapsulation.So, only the API calls that are to be used by clients will be visible and all the other APIs...
