REST Starter Guide

In this guide I will explain REST APIs to the best of my ability. I recommend you first learn what REST APIs are and how to use them and only then dive into making them.

REST stands for "REpresentational State Transfer". It is a software architectural style that emphasises simplicity and uniformity. Relying on JSON responses to send out data. It is one of the most commonly used architectural styles for web APIs, although GraphQL is looking like it's going to be strong competitor to REST.

In simple terms:

1. You: sends request
2. Server: receives request
3. Server: processes request
4. Server: sends JSON response
5. You: :)

Using a REST API

There is software for testing APIs without needing to write code, these are called REST clients. A few REST clients are: Postman and Insomnia. You can of course make requests in your code too.