RESTful Java Web Services - Third Edition

The HTTP GET method

The GET method is used to retrieve resources. Before digging into the actual mechanics of the HTTP GET request, we first need to determine what a resource is in the context of our web service and what type of representation we are exchanging.

For the rest of this section, we will use the example of a RESTful web service handling the department details for an organization. For this service, the JSON representation of a department looks as follows:

{"departmentId":10,"departmentName":"IT","manager":"John Chen"} 

The JSON representation of the list of departments looks as follows:

[{"departmentId":10,"departmentName":"IT","manager":"John Chen"}, {"departmentId":20,"departmentName":"Marketing","manager":"Ameya    J"}, {"departmentId":30,"departmentName":"HR","manager":"Pat ...