REST Workshop

• April 25, 2013
• Updated September 19, 2024

REST API workshop ¶

We held our first internal workshop today on REST APIs.

The video and slides are below and a link to the apiary.io discussion project can be found here.

What is REST? ¶

• Roy Fielding
• HTTP
• Distributed data
• Web APIs (GitHub, Twitter etc)

tl;dr ¶

GET     /users              ->  index
GET     /users/new          ->  new
POST    /users              ->  create
GET     /users/:user        ->  show
PUT     /users/:user        ->  update
DELETE  /users/:user        ->  destroy

Convention Not Standard ¶

• Convention is an interpretation
• Yoda
• Missing patterns
• You will be annoyed

Why this convention? ¶

• SOAP etc
• Clients
• Standardisation
• Frameworks
• pebble case study - TaxiApp

What to think about ¶

• Data
• Documentation
• Versioning
• Authentication
• Deprecation

What’s the best way to learn? ¶

• HTTP specification
• Build a client
• Resources
• Work with clients
• Be pragmatic

REST.next or Hypermedia ¶

• HATEOAS
• Discoverability
• Smart clients
• Work in progress

REST doesn’t work for everything ¶

• Event driven-apis
• WebSockets
• Messaging

Conclusion ¶

• On the web? Use REST. Use JSON.
• Prepare for frustration
• Be a pragmatist
• Be responsible
• Love your clients
• Free your data

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