What is RESTful API?

Author: Doe Hoon LEE

Soon after learning how to build a website with HTML, CSS, and JS, we start hearing REST API

So what really is it?

Let’s find out!

REST stands for “Representational State Transfer”. It talks about a methodology and how all resources like images, vidoes, DB, etc. are assigned with unique URI.

Different web pages might have different page structures with different urls.

REST is all about the rules telling us how they are supposed to be structured.

REST API means to follow the rules that REST states.

REST API

• URL

  all resources have unique IDs

• HTTP methods

  clients use methods for using resources: GET, POST, DELETE, PUT, PATCH.

• Formats

  Response sent back to the client from the server: JSON, XML, RSS.