REST

REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to guide the design and development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of a distributed, Internet-scale hypermedia system, such as the Web, should behave. The REST architectural style emphasises uniform interfaces, independent deployment of components, the scalability of interactions between them, and creating a layered architecture to promote caching to reduce user-perceived latency, enforce security, and encapsulate legacy systems.[1]

REST has been employed throughout the software industry to create stateless, reliable web-based applications. An application that adheres to the REST architectural constraints may be informally described as RESTful, although this term is more commonly associated with the design of HTTP-based APIs and what are widely considered best practices regarding the "verbs" (HTTP methods) a resource responds to while having little to do with REST as originally formulated—and is often even at odds with the concept.[2]

  1. ^ Fielding, Roy Thomas (2000). "Chapter 5: Representational State Transfer (REST)". Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures (Ph.D.). University of California, Irvine. Archived from the original on 2021-05-13. Retrieved 2004-08-17.
  2. ^ Fielding, Roy T. (2008-10-20). "REST APIs must be hypertext driven". roy.gbiv.com. Archived from the original on 2010-03-18. Retrieved 2016-07-06.