Q: What does REST mean?
A: REST is an acronym for Representational State Transfer. It refers to the architectural style of the Web and was described by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation.
Start at Google and you'll have that answer in five minutes. But, what is REST in plain english? Here's the for dummies explanation. The web is often used to display information about real-world things. Think of your bank account. You may use your bank's online banking to check you balance from time to time. What is happening when you pull up the page with your balance on it? Well, if your account (the actual account with money in it) is a resource, the HTML page that show some of the account's information is a representation, or view, of that resource. After all, money can't travel over the internet physically and wind up in your hand. Remember trying to "smell" things through the phone as a kid? So that's representation, but what about state and transfer. Well, state refers to the fact that your account is a dynamic, changing thing. Pull it up today, and the representation may show $100 balance. If you're lucky or well paid, tomorrow it may show $10,000. These are different "states" of the resource (account). So that leaves us with transfer. This one needs no explanation. The server sends your browser the html. Transfer. There it is: REST for dummies. Was this useful?
Posted by Christian at March 16, 2004 11:05 AM |Yes - quite useful. Now everytime I view my bank account to pay a bill, I'll enjoy the smell of the money flowing over the http transfer. (Ironicly, my account did show $10,000 - but alas, tommrow is another state.)
Posted by: at March 16, 2004 10:15 PM