What is REST?

; Erik Wilde ; UC Berkeley School of Information

http://localhost/repositories/drectures/rest-icwe2010/rest

Erik Wilde (UC Berkeley School of Information)

[http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/]

This work is licensed under a CC Attribution 3.0 Unported License [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/]

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Erik Wilde: What is REST?

Contents

Abstract 1 Abstraction Layers What is REST? What is Architecture? Architecture Examples Architecture vs. Design Architectural Styles REST is not an Architecture SOA is not an Architecture 2 REST: The Definition The REST Architectural Style Resource Identification Uniform Interface Self-Describing Messages Hypermedia Driving Application State Stateless Interactions 3 Web Architecture What is the Web? 3.1 Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Identifying Resources on the Web URI Schemes Query Information Processing URIs

2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 21 22 23 24

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3.2 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) How RESTful Applications Talk HTTP Methods Cookies 4 Representations 4.1 Structured Documents What is identified by a URI? Extensible Markup Language (XML) JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) JSON Example Resource Description Framework (RDF) Atom 4.2 Linked Documents Making Resources Navigable URI Templates 5 State State Management on the Web State in HTML or HTTP State in the Server Application State as a Resource Stateless Shopping Reusing Resources Conclusions 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 38 39 31 32 33 34 35 36 26 27 28

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Representational State Transfer (REST) is defined as an architectural style, which means that it is not a concrete
systems architecture, but instead a set of constraints that are applied when designing a systems architecture. We briefly discuss these constraints, but then focus on explaining how the Web is one such systems architecture that implements REST. In particular, the mechanisms of the Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), media types, and markup languages such as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML). We also introduce Atom and the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) as two established ways on how RESTful services are already provided and used on today's Web.

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Defining Representational State Transfer: 3 popular definitions 1. An architectural style for building loosely coupled systems defined by a set of general constraints (principles) the Web (URI/HTTP/HTML/XML) is an instance of this style 2. The Web used correctly (i.e., not using the Web as transport) HTTP is built according to RESTful principles services are built on top of Web standards without misusing them most importantly, HTTP is an application protocol (not a transport protocol) 3. Anything that uses HTTP and XML (XML without SOAP) XML-RPC was the first approach for this violates REST because there is no uniform interface

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Abstraction Layers

What is the A in SOA? Architecture is constraint-based design constraints are derived from requirements (contextualized requirements) design without constraints probably is art Constraints can be derived from a wide variety of sources technical infrastructure (current landscape and expected developments) business considerations (current landscape and expected developments) time horizon (short-term vs. long-term requirements) existing architecture scalability performance (based on performance requirements and definitions) cost (development, deployment, maintenance)

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Abstraction Layers

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Abstraction Layers

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Abstraction Layers

Architectural Style vs. Architecture Architectural Style: General principles informing the creation of an architecture Architecture: Designing a solution to a problem according to given constraints Architectural styles inform and guide the creation of architectures

Architecture: Louvre [http://en.wikipedia.org

/wiki/Louvre]

Architectural Style: Baroque

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_architecture]

Architecture: Villa Savoye [http://en.wikipedia.org

/wiki/Villa_Savoye]

Architectural Style: International Style

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Style_(architecture)]

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Abstraction Layers

REST is an architectural style distilled from the Web a posteriori some of the Web's standards and practices are not perfectly RESTful The Web is an information system following REST It is possible to design other RESTful information systems different uniform interfaces (not using HTTP's methods) different representations (not using HTML or XML) different identification (not using URIs)

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Abstraction Layers

SOA is more a style than an architecture SOA's biggest problem: What is a service? is a service something that is described by RPC-like custom functions? is a service exposed through a uniform interface? OASIS [http://www.oasis-open.org/] has a SOA Reference Model TC [http://www.oasis-open.org/committees
/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm]

the Reference Model [http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/v1.0/soa-rm.pdf] defines a service as a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description. the Reference Architecture [http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/soa-ra/v1.0/soa-ra-pr-01.pdf] describes a WS-* oriented world view SOA can be done RESTfully or not whether a RESTful approach makes sense depends on the constraints if the constraints allow REST, there should be a good reason for ignoring REST

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A set of constraints that inform an architecture 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Resource Identification [Resource Identification (1)] Uniform Interface [Uniform Interface (1)] Self-Describing Messages [Self-Describing Messages (1)] Hypermedia Driving Application State [Hypermedia Driving Application State (1)] Stateless Interactions [Stateless Interactions (1)] Claims: scalability, mashup-ability, usability, accessibility

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REST: The Definition

Name everything that you want to talk about Thing in this case should refer to anything products in an online shop categories that are used for grouping products customers that are expected to buy products shopping carts where customers collect products Application state also is represented as a resource next links on multi-page submission processes paged results with URIs identifying following pages

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REST: The Definition

The same small set of operations applies to everything [Resource Identification (1)] A small set of verbs applied to a large set of nouns verbs are universal and not invented on a per-application base if many applications need new verbs, the uniform interface can be extended natural language works in the same way (new verbs rarely enter language) Identify operations that are candidates for optimization GET and HEAD are safe operations PUT and DELETE are idempotent operations POST is the catch-all and can have side-effects Build functionality based on useful properties of these operations

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REST: The Definition

Resources are abstract entities (they cannot be used per se) Resource Identification [Resource Identification (1)] guarantees that they are clearly identified they are accessed through a Uniform Interface [Uniform Interface (1)] Resources are accessed using resource representations resource representations are sufficient to represent a resource it is communicated which kind of representation is used representation formats can be negotiated between peers Resource representations can be based on different constraints XML and JSON can represent the same model for different users whatever the representation is, it must support links [Hypermedia Driving Application State (1)]

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REST: The Definition

Resource representations [Self-Describing Messages (1)] contain links to identified resources [Resource Identification (1)] Resources and state can be used by navigating links links make interconnected resources navigable without navigation, identifying new resources is service-specific RESTful applications navigate instead of calling representations [Self-Describing Messages (1)] contain information about possible traversals the application navigates to the next resource depending on link semantics navigation can be delegated since all links use identifiers [Resource Identification (1)]

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REST: The Definition

This constraint does not say Stateless Applications! for many RESTful applications, state is an essential part the idea of REST is to avoid long-lasting transactions in applications Statelessness means to move state to clients or resources the most important consequence: avoid state in server-side applications Resource state is managed on the server it is the same for every client working with the service when a client changes resource state other clients see this change as well Client state is managed on the client it is specific for a client and thus has to be maintained by each client it may affect access to server resources, but not the resources themselves Security issues usually are important with client state clients can (try to) cheat by lying about their state keeping client state on the server is expensive (but may be worth the price)

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Web = URI + HTTP + ( HTML | XML ) RESTful Web uses HTTP methods as the uniform interface non-RESTful Web uses GET/POST and tunneled RPC calls a different RESTful Web uses Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Imagine your application being used in 10 browsers resources to interact with should be identified [Resource Identification (1)] and linked [Hypermedia Driving Application
State (1)]

a user's preferred font size could be modeled as client state what about an access count associated with an API key? Imagine your application being used in 10 browser tabs no difference as long as client state is representation-based cookies are shared across browser windows (different client scope)

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Essential for implementing a Resource Identification [Resource Identification (1)] URIs are human-readable universal identifiers for stuff many identification schemes are not human-readable (binary or hex strings) many RPC-based systems do not have universally identified objects Making every thing a universally unique identified thing is important it removes the necessity to scope non-universal identifiers it allows to talk about all things in exactly the same way

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Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ] URIs in their general case are very simple the scheme identifies how resources are identified the identification may be hierarchical or non-hierarchical Many URI schemes are hierarchical it is then possible to use relative URIs such as in a href="../" the slash character is not just a character, in URIs it has semantics [] the URI syntax is a federated and extensible naming system wherein each scheme's specification may further restrict the syntax and semantics of identifiers using that scheme. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax, RFC 3986, January 2005 [http://dret.net/rfc-index/reference/RFC3986]

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Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

Query components specify additional information it is non-hierarchical information further identifying the resource in most cases, it can be regarded as input to the resource Query components often influence caching successful GET/HEAD requests may be cached only cache query string URIs when explicitly requested (Expires/Cache-Control) The query component contains non-hierarchical data that, along with data in the path component [], serves to identify a resource within the scope of the URI's scheme and naming authority []. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax, RFC 3986, January 2005 [http://dret.net/rfc-index/reference/RFC3986]

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Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

Processing URIs is not as trivial as it may seem escaping and normalization rules are non-trivial many implementations are broken complain about broken implementations even more complicated when processing an Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) URIs are not just strings URIs are strings with a considerable set of rules attached to them implementing all these rules is non-trivial implementing all these rules is crucial application development environments provide functions for URI handling

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Essential for implementing a Uniform Interface [Uniform Interface (1)] HTTP defines a small set of methods for acting on URI-identified resources Misusing HTTP turns application into non-RESTful applications they lose the capability to be used just by adhering to REST principles it's a bad sign when you think you need an interface description language Extending HTTP turns applications into more specialized RESTful applications may be appropriate when more operations are required seriously reduces the number of potential clients

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Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

Safe methods can be ignored or repeated without side-effects

arithmetically safe: 41 1 1 1 1 in practice, without side-effects means without relevant side-effects Idempotent methods can be repeated without side-effects arithmetically idempotent: 41 0 0 0 0 in practice, without side-effects means without relevant side-effects Unsafe and non-idempotent methods should be treated with care HTTP has two main safe methods: GET HEAD HTTP has two main idempotent methods: PUT DELETE HTTP has one main overload method: POST

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Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

Cookies are client site state bound to a domain they are convenient because they work without having to use a representation they are inconvenient because they are not embedded in representations Cookies are managed by the client they are shared across browser tabs they are not shared across browsers used by the same user essentially, the client model of cookies is a bit outdated Two major things to look out for when using cookies: 1. session IDs are application state (i.e., non-resource state) 2. cookies break the back button (requests contain a URI/cookie combo) The ideal RESTful cookie is never sent to the server cookies as persistent data storage on the client interactions with the server are only using URIs and representations

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Essential for implementing Self-Describing Messages [Self-Describing Messages (1)] also should provide support for Hypermedia Driving Application State [Hypermedia Driving Application State (1)] Resource Identification [Resource Identification (1)] only talks about an abstract resource resources are never exchanged or otherwise processed directly all interactions use resource representations Representations depend on various factors the nature of the resource the capabilities of the server the capabilities or the communications medium the capabilities of the client requirements and constraints from the application scenario negotiations to figure out the best representation Representations are identified by media type (sometimes called MIME type) [http://dret.net/lectures/web-fall08
/mediatypes]

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Structured Documents

The language that started it all created as a streamlined version of SGML took over as the first universal language for structured data XML is a metalanguage (a language for representing languages) many domain-specific languages are defined as XML vocabularies some metalanguages use XML syntax (RDF [Resource Description Framework (RDF) (1)] is a popular example) XML is only syntax and has almost zero semantics very minimal built-in semantics (language identification, IDs, relative URIs) semantics are entirely left to the XML vocabularies XML is built around a tree model each XML document is a tree and thus limited in structure RESTful XML introduces hypermedia to turn XML data into a graph

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Structured Documents

The XMLHttpRequest API has been built for requesting XML via HTTP this is useful because XML is the most popular data format all requested data has to be processed by using XML access methods in JavaScript JavaScript does not have XML as its internal data model the XML received via XMLHttpRequest has to be parsed into a DOM tree DOM access in JavaScript is inconvenient for complex operations alternatively, the XML can be mapped to JavaScript objects (also requires parsing) JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) encodes data as JavaScript objects more efficient for the consumer if the consumer is written in JavaScript this turns the generally usable XML service into a JavaScript-oriented service for large-scale applications, it might make sense to provide XML and JSON this can be negotiated with HTTP content negotiation

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Structured Documents

<?xml version="1.0"?> <menu id="file" value="File"> <popup> <menuitem value="New" onclick="CreateNewDoc()"/> <menuitem value="Open" onclick="OpenDoc()"/> <menuitem value="Close" onclick="CloseDoc()"/> </popup> </menu> { "menu" : { "id" : "file", "value" : "File", "popup" : { "menuitem" : [ { "value" : "New", "onclick" : "CreateNewDoc()" }, { "value" : "Open", "onclick" : "OpenDoc()" }, { "value" : "Close", "onclick" : "CloseDoc()" } ] } }}

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Structured Documents

Developed around the same time as XML was developed based on the idea of machine-readable/understandable semantics builds the Semantic Web as a parallel universe on top of the Web RDF uses URIs for naming things RDF's data model is based on (URI, property, value) triples triples are combined and inference is used to produce a graph RDF is a metalanguage built on the triple-based data model RDF has a number of syntaxes (one of them is XML [Extensible Markup Language (XML) (1)]-based) RDF introduces a number of schema languages (often referred to as ontology languages)

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Structured Documents

A language for representing syndication feeds Much more modest in its goal than XML [Extensible Markup Language (XML) (1)] or RDF [Resource Description Framework (RDF) (1)] models feeds as a sets of entries with associated metadata uses an XML vocabulary for representing the data model uses links for expressing relationships in the data model Will be discussed in detail as a good foundation for REST [REST in Practice]

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Essential for using Hypermedia Driving Application State [Hypermedia Driving Application State (1)] RPC-oriented systems need to expose the available functions functions are essential for interacting with a service introspection or interface descriptions make functions discoverable RESTful systems use a Uniform Interface [Uniform Interface (1)] no need to learn about functions but how to find resources? 1. find them by following links from other resources 2. learn about them by using URI Templates [URI Templates (1)] 3. understand them by recognizing representations

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Linked Documents

REST does not care about URI details Apart from the scheme, URIs should be semantically opaque media types should not guessed by URI (breaks content negotiation) semantics should not be inferred from inspecting URIs URIs should not be guessed based on previously encountered URIs URI hacking on the Web works and can be useful Firefox Go Up [http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/2008/07/go-up.html] allows easy navigation up one level good URIs and bad UIs sometimes turn the address bar into a useful UI Technically speaking, URI templates are not required by REST practically speaking, URI templates are a useful best practice all URI navigable resources should also be navigable using representations

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Essential for supporting Stateless Interactions [Stateless Interactions (1)] Cookies [Cookies (1)] are a frequently used mechanism for managing state in many cases used for maintaining session state (login/logout) more convenient than having to embed the state in every representation some Web frameworks switch automatically between cookies and URI rewriting Cookies have two interesting client-side side-effects they are stored persistently independent from any representation they are shared state within the context of one browser Session ID cookies require expensive server-side tracking not associated with any resource and thus potentially global load-balancing must be cookie-sensitive or cookies must be global Resource-based state allows RESTful service extensions

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State

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State

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State

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State

Typical session scenarios can be mapped to resources [http://www.peej.co.uk/articles/no-sessions.html] Client: Show me your products Server: Here's a list of all the products Client: I'd like to buy 1 of http://ex.org/product/X, I am "John"/"Password" Server: I've added 1 of http://ex.org/product/X to http://ex.org/users/john/basket Client: I'd like to buy 1 of http://ex.org/product/Y, I am "John"/"Password" Server: I've added 1 of http://ex.org/product/Y to http://ex.org/users/john/basket Client: I don't want http://ex.org/product/X, remove it, I am "John"/"Password" Server: I've removed http://ex.org/product/X to http://ex.org/users/john/basket Client: Okay I'm done, username/password is "John"/"Password" Server: Here is the total cost of the items in http://ex.org/users/john/basket This is more than just renaming session to resource all relevant data is stored persistently on the server the shopping cart's URI can be used by other services for working with its contents instead of hiding the cart in the session, it is exposed as a resource

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State

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Erik Wilde: What is REST?

REST is simple to learn and use Unlearning RPC in most cases is the hardest part OO is all about identifying classes and methods distributed systems very often are built around RPC models many classical IT architectures are RPC-centric by design REST and RPC do not mix resource orientation function orientation cooperation integration openly distributed hiding distribution coarse-grained fine-grained complexity in resources formats complexity in function set

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