Representational state transfer (REST) is a software architectural style that was created to guide the design and development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system, such as the Web,...

Clients can only access resources using URIs. In other words, the client requests a resource using a URI and the server responds with a representation of the resource. A representation of a resource is another important concept in REST - to ensure responses can b...

The cacheable constraint requires that a response should implicitly or explicitly label itself as cacheable or non-cacheable.

If the response is cacheable, the client application gets the right to reuse the response data later for equivalent requests and a specified period.

The layered system style allows an architecture to be composed of hierarchical layers by constraining component behavior.

For example, in a layered system, each component cannot see beyond the immediate layer they are interacting with.

Statelessness means that no session information is retained by the server. Relevant session data is sent to the sever by the client in such a way that every packet of information transferred can be understood in isolation.

For example, in a RESTful API, making subsequent requests should be ...

By applying the principle of generality to the components interface, we can simplify the overall system architecture and improve the visibility of interactions.

Multiple architectural constraints help in obtaining a uniform interface and guiding the behaviour of components.

The follow...

The REST architectural style is designed for client-server applications. The coupling between the client and the server must be as loose as possible to facilitate large-scale adoption. This is achieved by creating a layer of abstraction on the server by defining resources that encapsulate entitie...