RESTful Web Services

- Goal: to reunite the programmable web (RSS, XML-RPC, SOAP) with the human web.
- HTTP is a document-based protocol

• The scoping information (“why should the server send this data instead of that data?”) is kept in the URI. This is the principle of addressability.
• The method information (“why should the server send this data instead of deleting it?”) is kept in the HTTP method. There are only a few HTTP methods, and everyone knows ahead of time what they do. This is the principle of the uniform interface
• Statelessness means that every HTTP request happens in complete isolation.
• Connectedness

The difference between PUT and POST is this: the client uses PUT when it’s in charge of deciding which URI the new resource should have. The client uses POST when the server is in charge of deciding which URI the new resource should have.