REST or Representational State Transfer is term that describes a specific approach to delivering an
API or
web service.
REST takes advantage of the same Internet mechanisms that are used to view regular web pages, therefore doekinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.comotocols to deliver or view REST
APIs.
There are different opinions of what is truly REST compliant, and many developers have seem to agree that using existing
HTTP mechanisms for your API is considered
RESTful, regardless of conforming 100% to REST.
REST allows you to take data and functionality available on your web site and make these resources available through a web services, and then return
XML or
JSON representations of these resources.
The reduced complexity of REST makes it more efficient to use in development, and has made it the preferred choice of developers, application architects, and API owners.
HTTP, the protocol we use to browse the web, has built in ways to transfer, describe and deliver content to humans. It makes sense to take advantage of this existing infrastructure to deliver data and functionality between applications.