If you're new to the world of software development, you may have heard the term "REST" being thrown around. REST stands for "Representational State Transfer", which is a set of architectural principles for designing web services. In this guide, we'll answer the most common questions about REST and how it relates to APIs, HTTP, web services, backend development, and JSON.
REST is a set of architectural principles for designing web services. It was first introduced in Roy Fielding's dissertation in 2000 as an alternative to SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). REST uses HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH to interact with resources on the web.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of rules that allow one software application to interact with another. RESTful APIs are designed using REST principles and use HTTP methods to interact with resources on the web. They are a popular choice for building web applications because they are simple and flexible.
REST uses HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH to interact with resources on the web. For example, if you want to retrieve data from a server using REST, you would use the GET method. If you wanted to update data on the server using REST, you would use the PUT or PATCH method.
Web services are software systems designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. RESTful web services are designed using REST principles and use HTTP methods to interact with resources on the web. They are commonly used in modern web applications as a way of exchanging data between different systems.
Backend development involves building the server-side components of a web application. RESTful APIs are commonly used to build the backend of web applications because they provide a simple and flexible way of exchanging data between different systems. Backend developers use REST principles to design APIs that are easy to use and maintain.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data format that is commonly used in modern web applications. RESTful APIs often use JSON as a way of exchanging data between different systems. JSON is easy to read and write, and it can be parsed by most programming languages.
