RESTful API design

For an API to be considered RESTful, it must adhere to a few principles that stay true to the original concepts behind the Web and are already known to most developers. Such an approach allows us to make sure we aren't building anything strange or unusual into our API while also giving our users a head start toward consuming it, since they are already familiar with its concepts.

Some of the important RESTful design concepts are:

• HTTP methods describe the kind of action to take; for example, GET methods will only ever read data, while POST requests will create something

• Data is expressed as a collection of resources

• Actions are expressed as changes to data

• URLs are used to refer to specific data

• HTTP headers are used to describe the kind of representation coming into and going out of the server

The following table shows the HTTP methods and URLs that represent the actions that we will support in our API, along with a brief description and an example use case of how we intend the...