Professional Java EE Design Patterns

13 RESTful Web Services

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?            

• What REST is and what it does
• The six constraints of REST
• The Richardson Maturity Model of a REST API
• How to design a RESTful API
• Demonstrating REST in Action
• How to implement REST in a Java EE
• HATEOAS—The highest level in the Richardson Maturity Model

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code download for this chapter is found at www.wrox.com/go/projavaeedesignpatterns on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 13 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

There is little doubt that you will have heard the term REST. What is less certain is that you will understand exactly what it means and how it is implemented. Many people who know nothing or very little about REST will tell you that your site must be REST “compatible” and that, without REST, your site cannot possibly survive. REST is a buzzword to these people, but for those who know what REST is and what benefits it can offer, it’s much more than just another buzzword. So what does REST really mean, and where does it come from?

REST means REpresentational State Transfer and is an architectural style of representing and transferring data. It consists of a set of six constraints placed on data, components, and their interactions within a distributed hypermedia system (the Internet). It is not tied to a protocol (although in almost all cases it is used with Hypertext Transfer Protocol [HTTP]), ...