Blogger Tricks

12 May 2012

REST (Representational State Transfer)

REST (Representational state transfer) is an approach for getting information content from a web site by reading a designated web page that contains an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file that describes and desired content.For example,REST could be used by an online publisher to make syndicated content available. Periodically,the publisher would prepare and activate a web page that include content and XML statements that described the content.Subscribers would need only to know the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for the page.


where the XML file was located,read it with a web browser,interpret the content data using the XML information,and reformat and use it appropriately (perhaps in some from of online publication).


As described in a dissertation by Roy Fielding,REST is an "Architectural style" that basically exploits existing technology and protocols of the web,including HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and XML,REST is simpler to use than the well known SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) approach,which requires writing or using a provided server program(to serve data) and a client program (to request data). SOAP,however,offers potentially more capability.For example,a syndicator that wanted to include up-to-date stock prices to subscribing Web sites might need to use SOAP,which allows a greater amount of program interaction between client and server.


REST is consistent with an information publishing approach that a number of web log sites use to describe some aspect of their site content,called RDF site summary(RSS).RSS uses the Resource description framework(RDF),a standard way to describe a web site or other Internet resource.


i.e. Representational state transfer(REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed for hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web.The term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation. Fielding is one of the principal authors of  the Hypertext Transfer Protocol(HTTP) specification versions 1.0 and 1.1.