REST API
Traditional Web Applications
- Traditional Application:
- Hosted on Web Servers
- Functionality is linked to UI Developed
- Users of the traditional Web Applications use browsers (GUI) to execute the applications
SOAP Based Web Services
- Without interacting only via UI, Functionality of the Server can be exposed to clients. On the Server host SOAP Web Services
- Cons:
- Client requires decent compute power to use SOAP Services
REST APIs
- Services are exposed much like SOAP, but unlike SOAP REST API uses stable HTTP Protocol to do this.
- Since HTTP is Used, We have
- Methods: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
- Requests
- Body
- Headers
- Content type
- Response
- Status Code: 1**, 2**, 3**, 4**,5** (404: page not found)
- Body
- Headers
- Content type
- HTTP request can be generated by all the languages and also from command lines such as curl, Invoke-WebRequest