Why RESTful Web Service is So Popular?
You may have heard the word so-called “Web Service” meaning interoperable machine-to-machine communication that makes use of standardized messaging protocols. Usually, web services are available from a web server provided by an application service provider so that clients or web-based programs can use it. There are numerous examples of web services such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Inventory Management, Product Management, Bill Management, Payment Management, etc. In this blog, we will discuss more about Why RESTful Web Service is So Popular?
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You know, in general, there are two broad categories of Web Service
A] SOAP Web Service
B] RESTful Web Service
In this blog, you will be able to know and understand RESTful Web Service
To start with, RESTful web service is based on the core concept of REST. So, let’s understand first of all what is REST.
REST:
REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer. It is an architectural style used to design web services. It is a way to access resources from a particular environment. It is based on a principle called ROA – Resource-Oriented Architecture.
You may have couple of questions in your mind – What is actually ROA? What does it stand for? ROA:
ROA means Resource Oriented Architecture.
It is a style of architecture that extends the REST architectural style and offers a broader, extensible, flexible, and transport-independent architecture. The ROA is a way of turning a problem into a RESTful web service: an arrangement of URIs, HTTP, and XML that works like the rest of the Web, and that programmers will enjoy using. ROA has important properties such as addressability, statelessness, connectedness, and the uniform interface. Elevate your programming skills with comprehensive Java classes in Pune. Expert-led courses to master Java’s versatility and enhance your career prospects. Enroll now!
ROA is based on three building blocks
- Resource
- URI
- Representation
Let’s understand one by one each building block
- Resource:
Resource is the foundation of ROA. It is an abstraction of information. Resource can be anything, which you think is a logical or physical representation of something. It can be a software document, a chair, a car, a computer, a student, weather info, a collection of other resources, a book, a file on a computer or even bits in memory so on. You could have a server that could host important documents, images, MP3 songs, and videos. All of these are examples of resources. If a client, say a web browser needs any of these resources, it has to send a request to
the server to access these resources. Now REST services define a way on how these resources can be accessed.
Every resource should have three important characteristics:
- It should be unique
- It must have a minimum one representation
- It should have attributes, the schema
Remember by definition, no two resources can be the same. If they were the same, it means there is only one resource. However, at some moment in time, two different resources may point to the same data.
Examples of resources:
- Road map of Pune city in Maharashtra, India
- Information about starfish
- The latest release of the software product
- Version 2.4.6 of the software product
- Sales count of Q3 in the year 2022
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- URI:
URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier. Generally, it is used to identify resources whether logical or physical. It is a sequence of characters that contain the name and address of the resource. Without URI a piece of information cannot be considered as a resource. Every resource should have at least one URI.
How one should create a URI to some resource?
- URI should have a proper structure.
- URI should be descriptive.
- URI should vary in predictable ways.
- No two resources should have the same URI but one resource can have more than one URI
Examples: Let’s understand URI for the resources in above mentioned example a. www.sample.com/map/roads/India/MH/Pune
- www.sample.com/wiki/starfish
- www.sample.com/produc/software/release/latest.zip
- www.sample.com/product/software/release/2.4.6.zip
- www.sample.com/Q3/2022
Make a point that every URI designates exactly one resource. If it designated more than one, it wouldn’t be a Universal Resource Identifier (URI).
- Representation:
It is just some data about the current state of resources. Whenever a particular resource is requested by the user, web server can not send an idea about the resource. The server has to send a set of bytes in a specific file format and in a specific language. This is exactly a representation of the requested resource. A representation is any useful information about the state of a resource.
For example, the sales numbers for the 3rd quarter of 2022 might be represented numerically or as a graphical chart. Some resources represent physical objects or other things that can’t be reduced to information. Lots of news sites make their articles available in an ad-laden format,
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and in a stripped-down “printer-friendly” format. These are all different representations of the same resources.
Now let’s understand Why RESTful Web Service is so popular.
RESTful web service allows different web applications developed using different programming languages and technologies to communicate with each other. Also in today’s modern era, mobile devices are being used to perform many business activities. Using RESTful web service, you don’t have to worry about the underlying layer of the device. Ultimately it saves the amount of effort to code the applications on mobiles. Also, nowadays Cloud cloud-based architecture has gained a lot of importance. REST easily integrates with a Cloud-based environment.
In RESTful web service. Resources are accessed using Uniform Interfaces. These uniform interfaces define a fixed set of operations such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to access resources. These is the key-principles that differentiate RESTful web services from other web services. It is accessed using HTTP methods over HTTP protocol.
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Key Features of RESTful Web Service
- Technology and Platform Independent: It can be developed using any programming language or technology such as Java, Dot.net, Python, PHP, Node JS, Express JS, Ruby on Rails, etc
- Fast: Faster as compared to SOAP-based web service
- Lightweight: RESTful web service consumes less resources (memory and CPU) and bandwidth as compared to SOAP
- Different resource representations: REST supports different data formats such as XML, HTML, JSON, and Plain text.
There are various examples of RESTful APIs and Services implementations
A good real-life example is the GitHub API, which provides access to a variety of resources, including repositories, issues, pull requests, and more.
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Other popular examples of RESTful Web Services and APIs include
- Google API for Gmails,
- Map Services Google Maps,
- Weather Information Google Weather,
- Amazon E-commerce API,
- Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
- Messaging Services WhatsApp, Telegram,
- Payment Services such as Paypal, Pay with Visa,
- Price Compare Services Kayak, Expedia,
- Streaming Services Netflix, Spotify and
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