RESTful/Platform APIs and Examples, Tutorials and the Software Craft. Mostly…
Introduction to REST concepts
Idempotence is sometimes a confusing concept, especially when you try to understand the academic definition. However, understanding what makes a REST API operation idempotent is simple with the concept introduced in this short, somewhat humorous look at Idempotency in Cows & REST APIs…
This is a follow-on to my last two posts, Introduction to REST (Revisited) and RESTExpress Overview and Tutorial, with this short video being the Q&A after the presentation. In it, the video talks about authentication, authorization, and some of the RESTExpress features around sorting, filtering and performance. It’s a quickie, but it’s always nice to understand what others are asking… and some answers to those questions.
[youtube http://youtu.be/z5u4rZTK8o0]In my last post, Intro to REST (Revisited), as well as discussing the six constraints of the REST architectural style, the video discussed the background for the Java Rest Service Framework, RESTExpress and introduces a sample project. The video below is part two of the presentation, where we dive in and create a real, working service suite using RESTExpress around a blogging system that uses MongoDB for its back-end store. The reference implementation demo’d during the presentation is available on GitHub and supports linking, pagination, filtering and sorting of collection results returned (for blogs, entries, and comments).
This video goes into a bit of depth on how all that gets accomplished in your service suites with a minimum of coding.
[youtube http://youtu.be/hHDO6soGehc]
If you haven’t heard, RESTExpress is a lightweight micro-framework (along with some other micro-frameworks) that support rapid development of highly scalable, high performance REST services supporting JSON and XML payloads. It is an active open source project that is gaining momentum. You can get more information at the resources below:
I get a lot of questions around RESTful practices and I see a lot of confusion out there in REST API land about what REST really means, is, and how to implement it. Last November 2012, I talked at the Pearson Technology Summit in Denver, Colorado. The talk is entitled “Instant REST Services with RESTExpress” but spends some time during the first have to revisit the six REST architectural constraints. While the lapel mic was giving me troubles and causing some noise on the recording, the content is definitely understandable. Enjoy.
[youtube http://youtu.be/XcNDRr5zaI0]
The Six Constraints of the RESTful Architectural Style are:
The REST architectural style describes six constraints. These constraints, applied to the architecture, were originally communicated by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation (see http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm) and defines the basis of RESTful-style. This video introduces the six contraints as an introduction to REST.