RESTful Web API Design with Node.js - Second Edition

The REST goals

Now that we've covered the main REST principles, let's dive deeper into what can be achieved when they are followed:

• Separation of the representation and the resource
• Visibility
• Reliability
• Scalability
• Performance

Separation of the representation and the resource

A resource is just a set of information, and as defined by Principle 4, it can have multiple representations; however, its state is atomic. It is up to the caller to specify the desired media type with the accept header in the HTTP request, and then it is up to the server application to handle the representation accordingly and return the appropriate content type of the resource and a relevant HTTP status code:

• HTTP 200 OK in the case of success
• HTTP 400 Bad Request if an unsupported ...