What Is REST API?
What is Web service? What is API? What is REST API? How REST works Implementation of REST API
A web service is a software system that supports interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically WSDL). Other systems interact with the web service related using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with different web-related standards.
An API, or application programming interface, is a set of guidelines and standards for accessing a web-based software application or tool. An API specifies how software components should interact, allowing communication between different systems.
REST, or Representational State Transfer, is a type of web architecture and a set of constraints usually applied to web services. REST is an architectural style for building web services, not a standard. RESTful APIs are built on top of HTTP, using HTTP verbs to specify operations and HTTP response codes to indicate status and errors.
Six constraints define the basic principles of REST: Client-Server, Statelessness, Cacheability, Layered System, Code on Demand (optional), and Uniform Interface. These constraints ensure that RESTful APIs have consistent and predictable behavior, making it easier for developers to understand and use them.
To implement a REST API, you need to define the endpoints (URIs) that you want to expose, the HTTP verbs you wish to support (such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), and the format in which you want to return data (such as JSON or XML). You can then write the code to handle each endpoint and use HTTP response codes to indicate success or failure.
Once you have implemented your REST API, you can document it using a tool such as Swagger or Postman, making it easier for developers to understand and use your API. You can also test your REST API using a tool like Postman to ensure it works as expected.
REST is a powerful and flexible architecture for building web services, and RESTful APIs are widely used for creating web-based applications and integrating different systems.