Episode 88
Two months ago, we started with motivations behind web APIs and looked at their design from UX point of view. The important conclusion was, that API and its ecosystem is to developers what GUI is to regular web applications users. A month ago, we looked from the scientific point of view at the properties of a modern web systems architectural style, REST, through the lenses of Roy Fielding’s famous Ph.D. dissertation.
Having those foundations, today we are going to get our hands dirty and talk about how to actually get the work done. Today we will talk about resources and representations, naming, relations, HTTP methods, collections, functions and sanity checks.
Resources
REST web API is built around exposing representations of resources being part of our system. The distinction is important: resource is some piece of data stored on our system or accessed ad hoc from somewhere else. It might be a record in a relational database, a document in NoSQL, a file on disk, or a stone tablet with hieroglyphs stored in an ancient tomb. Read the rest of this entry »
How To Train Your Java 