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REST Introduction
Does anybody know a short introduction to REST APIs ?
I know HTTP reasonably well (it is not that complicated after all, I dare to say) and I need to know specifically what REST is about. I understand that being ignorant on the matter does not help in selecting a good source, but I've found all books (PDFs) on the internet excessively long, 300 pages+. Is it me overlooking the topic - because I don't know what I am talking about - or are they truly excessive ?
Any recommendations ?
- highhedgehog 7y agohttps://pages.apigee.com/rs/apigee/images/api-design-ebook-2012-03.pdf https://pages.apigee.com/rs/apigee/images/api-design-ebook-2...
- kody 7y agoI strongly recommend Designing Web APIs: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920123880.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920123880.do You can jump ahead to the Representational State Transfer chapter to get a good overview of REST, then read whichever chapters seem interesting or solve whichever problems you're facing.
- pulsarpietro 7y agoCan't find that chapter here: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Web-APIs-Building-Developers/dp/1492026921 https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Web-APIs-Building-Developer... am I looking at a the right edition ?
- kody 7y agoSorry, it's under Chapter 2. API Paradigms / Request-Response APIs / Representational State Transfer
- jermaustin1 7y agoMicrosoft has a decent document regarding REST API design[1]. The main gist is, HTTP Verbs tell the application what to do with the object the URI Path points to. 1: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/best-practices/api-design https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/best-pra...
- ameyv 7y agoIf you wish to see everything in one single doc page. https://github.com/Microsoft/api-guidelines/blob/vNext/Guidelines.md https://github.com/Microsoft/api-guidelines/blob/vNext/Guide...
- pulsarpietro 7y agoThanks all, this is probably a very good starting point
- macca321 7y agoThere's two kinds of REST. REST as most developers misunderstand it, and REST as Roy Fielding, inventor of REST, understands it. For the former you can read the Microsoft REST guidelines, for the latter I suggest getting Mike Amundsen's RESTful Web APIs book. If you do go with the latter be prepared for a lot of frustration with those who went with the former.
- Something1234 7y agoCan you explain what is wrong with most people's implementation of rest?
- macca321 7y agohttps://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypert...
- macca321 7y agoand https://8thlight.com/blog/jason-desrosiers/2018/05/30/the-hypermedia-maturity-model.html https://8thlight.com/blog/jason-desrosiers/2018/05/30/the-hy... if you are wondering what that means
- santypk4 7y agoCheck this site https://restfulapi.net/ https://restfulapi.net/ It has information about RESTful API Designs, HATEOAS, Caching, Compression, etc. Very useful