REST APIs

A Comprehensive overview of REST APIs (Representational State Transfer APIs):

What is a REST API?

A REST API is an application programming interface (API) that uses the HTTP protocol to enable communication between different systems. REST stands for "representational state transfer," and it is based on the architectural style of the same name. The main principle of REST is that a server should expose a consistent interface for interacting with resources, and clients should be able to manipulate those resources using a standard set of operations (such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).

REST API principles

REST APIs should be stateless, meaning that each request should contain all the information necessary to process it, and the server should not store any information about previous requests.

REST APIs should be cacheable, meaning that clients should be able to cache responses and reuse them in subsequent requests.

REST APIs should be uniform, meaning that they should use the same set of operations and response codes for all resources.

REST APIs should be layered, meaning that clients should not be able to tell whether they are communicating directly with the server or with an intermediate cache.

REST API design

REST APIs are designed around resources, which are abstract representations of real-world objects or concepts. Each resource should have a unique identifier (such as a URL) and should be accessible using a standard set of operations.

The structure of the API should follow a logical hierarchy, with resources organized into collections and subcollections.

The API should use HTTP status codes to indicate the success or failure of a request, and should use HTTP headers to provide additional information about the response.

REST API implementation

REST APIs can be implemented using any programming language and can be hosted on any web server. REST APIs are typically implemented using HTTP