Mastering API REST: Essential Skill for Modern Tech Careers
Explore the critical role of API REST in modern tech careers, essential for web services and applications.
Understanding API REST
API REST, or Representational State Transfer APIs, are a cornerstone in the development of modern web services and applications. This architectural style was introduced by Roy Fielding in his 2000 doctoral dissertation and has since become a standard for designing networked applications. RESTful APIs are designed to be efficient, reliable, and scalable, making them ideal for today's dynamic tech environments.
What is API REST?
API REST refers to a set of principles that guide the design and development of the architecture for distributed systems. REST is not a protocol or standard, but rather an architectural style that defines a set of constraints and properties based on HTTP. Web services that conform to the REST architectural style, or RESTful web services, provide interoperability between computer systems on the internet.
RESTful APIs enable the interaction between client and server in a flexible way that allows the client to perform structured requests and receive predictable responses. The key principles of REST involve:
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Resource-based: In REST, the focus is on resources, which are any information that can be named, such as a document, a person, a process, etc. Each resource is identified by URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers).
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Stateless operations: Each request from a client to a server must contain all the information needed to understand the request, and cannot take advantage of any stored context on the server. This means that the session state is kept entirely on the client.
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Cacheable: As HTTP is inherently a caching protocol, RESTful APIs are designed to be cacheable, including their responses being explicitly defined as cacheable or non-cacheable.
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Layered system: REST allows the use of a layered system architecture that helps organize complex systems into hierarchical layers, with each layer having a specific functionality. This is beneficial for enhancing the system's scalability, security, and manageability.