4/9/2020 Characteristics of REST services - Hands-On RESTful Web Services with Go - Second Edition

 Hands-On RESTful Web Services with Go - Second Edition

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Characteristics of REST
services
These are the main properties that make REST simple and unique compared to its
predecessors:

Client-server based architecture: This architecture is most essential for

the modern web to communicate over HTTP. A single client-server may
look naive initially, but many hybrid architectures are evolving. We will
discuss more of these shortly.

Stateless: This is the most important characteristic of a REST service. A

REST HTTP request consists of all the data needed by the server to
understand and return the response. Once a request is served, the server
doesn't remember whether the request arrived after a while. So, the
operation will be a stateless one.

Cacheable: In order to scale an application well, we need to cache certain

responses. REST services can be cached for better throughput.

Representation of resources: The REST API provides the uniform

interface to talk to. It uses a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to map
the resources (data). It also has the advantage of requesting a specific data

Implementation freedom: REST is just a mechanism to define your web

services. It is an architectural style that can be implemented in multiple
ways. Because of this flexibility, you can create REST services in the way
you wish to. As long as it follows the principles of REST, you have the
freedom to choose the platform or technology for your server. 

 Thoughtful caching is essential for REST services to scale.

We have seen the types of web services and understood what is REST API. We
also looked at the characteristics that make REST services unique. In the next
section, we will take a look at REST verbs and status code and cover a few
examples of path parameters. 

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