Windows Azure Mobile Services

Chapter 5

Using REST to Access WAMS Data

IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Understand the basis concepts and verbs used in Representational State Transform
• Use REST to perform CRUD functionality against your mobile service
• Send administrator authenticated requests to your mobile service

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at http://www.wrox.com/go/windowsazuremobileservices on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 5 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

The ability to use client-side libraries to access your mobile service is certainly convenient. It’s nice to be able to write a single line of code that updates and retrieves data. However, in some situations client-side libraries are not available, but the need to access the Windows Azure Mobile Services (WAMS) data remains. This is the gap that REST-based access is designed to fill.

REPRESENTATIONAL STATE TRANSFER

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a relatively recent addition to the toolbox of web development. It is an architectural model with a number of fairly distinctive attributes. Conceptually, REST provides a very clean separation of client interface from the actual implementation on the server. It’s a stateless interface, which is quite valuable in the web world. However, the attribute that is most characteristic of REST is the requirement for a uniform interface, which is both an interesting and powerful concept in ...