Comments on: Thoughts on REST web services http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2012/11/30/thoughts-on-rest-web-services/ Stay curious! Thu, 02 May 2013 12:36:53 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Xaprb http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2012/11/30/thoughts-on-rest-web-services/#comment-20417 Xaprb Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:49:27 +0000 http://www.xaprb.com/blog/?p=2971#comment-20417 I just stumbled upon Swagger, which also looks pretty useful.

]]> By: Zak zebrowski http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2012/11/30/thoughts-on-rest-web-services/#comment-20407 Zak zebrowski Sat, 01 Dec 2012 15:02:41 +0000 http://www.xaprb.com/blog/?p=2971#comment-20407 Cool on json-rpc! Yay new tools!

]]> By: Xaprb http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2012/11/30/thoughts-on-rest-web-services/#comment-20406 Xaprb Sat, 01 Dec 2012 02:07:58 +0000 http://www.xaprb.com/blog/?p=2971#comment-20406 There’s also JSON-RPC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON-RPC and http://json-rpc.org/

]]> By: Zak Zebrowski http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2012/11/30/thoughts-on-rest-web-services/#comment-20405 Zak Zebrowski Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:15:55 +0000 http://www.xaprb.com/blog/?p=2971#comment-20405 Also, check out XMLRPC. It’s by one of the people on the SOAP commitie that got frustrated with the complexity of SOAP. It’s simple and works. (It does have some issues with utf8 encoded data, but you can work around that.)

]]> By: Titi Ala'ilima http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2012/11/30/thoughts-on-rest-web-services/#comment-20404 Titi Ala'ilima Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:40:04 +0000 http://www.xaprb.com/blog/?p=2971#comment-20404 There are a couple advantages to proper REST that you don’t address, namely exposing important information about the interaction in the HTTP protocol. The URL is very meaningful in REST, and can be used for lots of operational decisions, such as caching and load balancing.

As for discoverability, it’s actually much smarter about that goal than SOAP. SOAP, like most XML, falls into the trap of being a poor experience for both humans and machines. A good HATEOAS interface could be navigated by a human with a Web browser, who could then program the large-scale interactions.

That said, REST’s common law marriage to HTTP methods and statuses create a lot of confusion between transport layer problems and application layer problems. In addition to the paucity of verbs, I am particularly befuddled when trying to apply the 4xx status codes consistently.

I’m with you that when you just want to get it done, JSON-over-HTTP is the current solution of choice. The conceptual purists, for which I have great sympathy, would prefer to start with well-organized resources and evolve from there. Maybe we really just need to start with WORK (or similar), and then find out the specific points where REST (or similar) would be useful and its benefits become clear.

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