PUBLIC MARKS from mbertier with tag rest

Why build a RESTful web service for DayTrader? Because I frequently hear that REST can't be applied to complex situations. I also want to use the example as motivation for talking about some of the idioms that are available to handle more extensive requirements.

You may or may not be aware that there is debate going on about the “right” way to implement heterogeneous application-to-application communication: While the current mainstream clearly focuses on web services based on SOAP, WSDL and the WS-* specification universe, a small, but very vocal minority claims there’s a better way: REST, short for REpresentational State Transfer. In this article, I will try to provide a pragmatic introduction to REST and RESTful HTTP application integration without digressing into this debate. I will go into more detail while explaining those aspects that, in my experience, cause the most discussion when someone is exposed to this approach for the first time.

Invariably, learning about REST means that you’ll end up wondering just how applicable the concept really is for your specific scenario. And given that you’re probably used to entirely different architectural approaches, it’s only natural that you start doubting whether REST, or rather RESTful HTTP, really works in practice, or simply breaks down once you go beyond introductory, “Hello, World”-level stuff. In this article, I will try to address 10 of the most common doubts people have about REST when they start exploring it, especially if they have a strong background in the architectural approach behind SOAP/WSDL-based Web services.

There is a giant sucking sound of processing power, time, money, and intellectual resources being used up on this problem, all because someone wants to store a shopping cart in HttpSession.

WSO2 Web Services Framework/PHP (WSO2 WSF/PHP), a binding of WSO2 WSF/C into PHP is a PHP extension based on Apache Axis2/C, Apache Sandesha2/C and Apache Rampart/C for providing and consuming Web Services in PHP. WSO2 WSF/PHP supports both SOAP 1.2 and SOAP 1.1, REST style invocation and WS-* stack specifications: SOAP MTOM, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Security 1.0 (2004), WS-Addressing 1.0 and submission. WSO2 WSF/PHP is released under Apache License, Version 2.0

Ah, so if these issues just turn out to be misunderstandings on your part then Microsoft will just use the APP and not roll out its own protocol? I'm so glad to hear that.

Joe Gregorio answered some questions about WADL in his post "Do we need WADL?". Also note that Leonard Richardson has chimed in recently on the WADL issue. And I of course have some different thoughts. :-)

A good way to generate REST WS with ezpublish.

OHM is a library for serving Python objects as REST-style HTTP APIs, and for consuming REST-style APIs as Python objects.

ETags, or entity-tags, are an important part of HTTP, being a critical part of caching, and also used in "conditional" requests. So what is an etag?

Besides all these negative points, there are very strong positive points as well. OK, SOAP/WSDL might not be the best choice for every application, but for many at least it is a not so bad one. And even if code generation does not always work perfectly, it usually saves a lot of work. There is just this feeling that there should be something simpler, more straight-forward, and more intuitive. And then REST enters the stage. It is not that REST by definition is easier than SOAP/WSDL. In fact, for machines it is not easier at all.

Last week, Google's Thomas Steiner unveiled that he is working on a Google project for generating language specific client libraries from WADL and generating WADL from documentation examples, tentatively called Google REST Compile and Google REST Describe. Thomas chose WADL as the description language to be used with the new tool, after examining all the alternatives

When putting together a table to describe your REST service, and believe me, I've been seeing a lot of these tables recently, there needs to be a distinction between the server view and the client view.

If there are many clients then the demands for caching semantics will be begin to dominate. In that case you need to abandon HTTP as just a simple transport and start using the application level semantics of HTTP to start leveraging the caching architecture already built into the Internet.

This is like asking Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to write the Democratic Party platform.

Simplicity is a virtue. And in software development, it's an essential virtue. The venerable Jargon File has long had a particularly good adjective for systems that aren't simple: They are baroque.

by Joe Gregorio