What Do Web Developers need to know about REST API?

While developing modern web applications, developers explore ways to make them communicate seamlessly with various applications and services. The application programming interfaces (APIs) make it easier for programmers to make web applications communicate with various applications and services without writing additional code. Each web developer can even add specific functionality to the web application by choosing APIs from various categories – shopping, social networking, mapping, search, mapping and telephony.

A REST API or RESTful Web Service is developed based on Representational State Transfer (REST) technology. REST is stateless and cacheable client-server architecture. Many websites and web applications use REST APIs to communicate with other applications and services through various HTTP methods – GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and OPTIONS. HTTP protocol enables web developers to work with several widely used platforms and programming languages. Also, the developers can accelerate web application development by keeping the front-end and back-end separated.

Understanding Important Aspects of REST API

Developed Based on REST Architecture

As its name indicates, a REST API facilitates client server communication based on REST technology. REST is a stateless but cacheable technology. It enables developers to use REST client to access and present the resources provided by REST server. They can even identify individual resources like text, XML and JSON by their unique URIs or Global IDs.

Unique Characteristics

Unlike other APIs, a REST API must adhere to the key constraints of RESTful architecture style. The constraints of REST architecture styles make REST APIs different from other APIs. A REST API needs to be designed based on key constraints like stateless, cacheable, and client-server. The web application developers need to use a client to handle frontend and a server to handle the backend functionalities. But they have option to keep the client and server separated. Likewise, they can enable the client to cache responses, but cannot store any data on the server between two requests.

Access Resources through HTTP Standard Methods

REST technology used HTTP protocol for data communications. While using a REST API, the developers can treat each component as a resource. Also, they need to access the resources through HTTP standard methods like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and OPTIONS. For instance, they can use PUT for creating new resources, POST to update existing resources, GET to provide read-only access to resources, and DELETE to remove resources.

Use Open Protocols and Standards

A REST API is developed as a collection of open standards and protocols. The developers can use REST API to make a web application interact with various applications and systems through open protocols. The open standards make it easier for programmers to facilitate communication between applications written in different programming languages. Likewise, the programmers can use REST API to make web applications communicate with each other regardless of the underlying platform.

Divide Individual Transactions into Small Modules

A REST API divides each transaction into a number of modules. Each module handles a specific aspect of the transaction. The modules make it easier for developers to make web applications interact with other applications and systems in a flexible way. The developer can even boost the performance of web applications by chaining the requests and collecting the requests for future use.

Work with Cloud Platforms and Applications

The REST API makes it easier for developers to make web applications interact with various cloud-based applications. The developers can avail the REST APIs provided by major cloud service providers to leverage key benefits of cloud services including lower cost and enhanced scalability. They can even use stateless components to scale the cloud resources according to varying user load of the website. The web developers can even use the APIs to work with widely used cloud computing models like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Choose from Many REST APIs

The web developers can easily make the web applications interactive using REST APIs provided by major tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and popular social networking platforms. They even have option to choose from a wide range of third-party REST APIs according to precise communication needs of the web applications. At present, web developers use a variety of REST APIs – Google Translation REST API, Facebook REST API, WordPress REST API, Magento REST API, and Bing Maps REST API.

Create Your Own REST API

In addition to using a number of third-party REST APIs, the web developers even have option to create custom REST APIs to meet their precise needs. They can create custom REST APIs based on the six key constraints of REST technology – client-server, stateless, cacheable, uniform interface, layered system, and code on demand. Also, they can implement a number of best practices and use robust tools to accelerate development of custom REST APIs. Here is a brief guide to building restful APIs with Laravel.

On the whole, the web developers can use REST APIs to make web applications interact seamlessly with applications written in different programming languages and running on varying platforms. They also have option to choose from a wide range of third-party REST APIs provided by social networking platforms, search engines, content management systems, and cloud service providers. At the same time, the web developers can even create custom REST APIs based according to their precise needs.