RESTful Rails Development

Chapter 4. The REST of the World

REST is an architectural abstraction designed for distributed systems and the Web. Actions in REST map to URIs that identify resources. REST operates on resource representations that can differ from the data representations stored in the application database. A resource epresentation can be anything from a JSON string to the HTML returned when accessing a certain URL. The data object stored in a database record is something fundamentally different.

Life Is CRUD

Actions on database records are usually guided not by REST principles, but by CRUD. CRUD is an abbreviation of Create, Read, Update, Delete, the four basic functions of persistent storage.

Sometimes an additional function is considered: Search. In this case, CRUD is referred to as SCRUD.

Note

Wikipedia suggests that CRUD is rather a backronym. A backronym is a specially constructed acronym created to fit a specific word or concept. A famous backronym example is NASA’s Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT), named after Stephen Colbert.

The actions CRUD refers to map to all of the major functions implemented in relational database applications. In fact, each letter maps to a standard SQL statement.

REST and CRUD are therefore two very different paradigms for two very different worlds.

REST is an architectural style for applications. REST resources can be the result of different database queries, and neither the client nor the REST server really needs to ...