REST Tutorial: basic concepts

What is REST?

REST is the acronym used for Representational State Transfer. In short, it can be said that it is the junction of definitions and development principles that aim at creating projects with well-defined and modern interfaces.

First mentioned in the year 2000, in a dissertation published by the American computer scientist Roy Fielding, REST is increasingly present within WEB engineering projects and, for this reason, the understanding of this subject by developers is becoming increasingly important.

How does it work?

REST enables communication between applications, through the use of web principles and protocols, dispensing with the use of protocols such as SOAP.

Its use is quite simple, enabling the access and rendering of resources through URIs or global IDs. To represent the architecture, other resources can also be used, such as Json, XML, and others.

For its use, it is necessary for the client to make a request to the server, to authorize the sending or modification of data. This request consists of:

• Header: the header that is responsible for sending information about the request;

• HTTP methods (HyperText Transfer Protocol): responsible for defining the type of operation that the server will perform. Some of the most used methods today:

  • GET: the most used method, in most cases being used to request the sending of resources to the server;
  • POST: its function is aimed at sending input data to the server. Normally used to support HTML forms;
  • PUT: edits and updates documents and projects already hosted on a server;
  • DELETE: deletes a certain piece of data or collection from the server.

• Path: the path used between the client and the server;

• Request body: an optional piece of data, which can be used to send information to the server.

Because it is a set of scalable, lightweight, and fast guidelines, REST APIs are being used more and more. When applied correctly and following best practices, this technology can be very useful, especially in mobile app development and the internet of things (IoT), which, with the advancement of technology, has been gaining more and more ground in the programming and development market.

Therefore, dive deeper! Acquiring greater knowledge about this topic is fundamental and, in addition to being extremely useful, it has become indispensable know-how for various positions in technology companies.