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HTTP and REST
Application Program Interface: a broad, generalized term referring to a contract provided by one piece of software sent to another piece of software. "Give me this information formatted in this way, and I'll give you this data formatted in this way."
In a restaurant, there is a customer at a table, a kitchen, and a waiter. In this scenario, the waiter is the API. He is formatted to take a certain order in a certain way, and then bring back a certain meal. So an API is basically a messanger or a waiter between running software.
Representational State Transfer
- Architecture style for designing networked applications
- Relies on a stateless, client-server protocol, almost always HTTP
- Treats server objects as resources that can be created or destroyed
- Can be used by virtually any programming language
An API is a messenger, and REST lets us use HTTP requests to format those messages. "RESTful API" refers to an API that conforms to the REST constraints.
All wiki pages are summaries of the work of others. See the top of each page for the source blogs/articles/books and their authors. All other content by Billy Bunn.