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Possible Duplicate:
What am I not understanding about REST?

What is REST? How does it relate to WCF? I have been asked to look into RESTful implementation of services. Can you please point me to links that would be helpful for beginners.

I am a .NET developer with a decent knowledge of ASP.NET

Community
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Developer
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    Nick, a brief search would have found several questions on this topic here in SO. – John Saunders Jun 02 '09 at 18:03
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    I will say that I just looked and did not find any questions that related to REST at a 'basic' level. This question may be valid. – JasonRShaver Jun 02 '09 at 18:06
  • "What am I not understanding about REST?" at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/343288/what-am-i-not-understanding-about-rest, for just one example. I did a search before voting to close as a duplicate. – John Saunders Jun 02 '09 at 18:12
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    I don't understand the urgency of "closing" questions. Why can't we wait to see how people respond, if they find it helpful they will upvote it and we get more answers.... – Developer Jun 02 '09 at 18:37
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    how many points do i need to be able to re-open questions? I know it can be done... But I don't see the link anywhere... – Peter Perháč Jun 02 '09 at 19:02
  • @MasterPeter - I see a reopen link underneath the tags, do you see it? – Developer Jun 02 '09 at 19:07
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    The linked duplicate has no relation to this question. The author of the linked question already understands what `REST` is. The author of this question does not; nor do i. – Ian Boyd Sep 05 '11 at 05:53

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REpresentational State Transfer

It is basically the HTTP protocol, which was originally created to allow representational state transfer, not just transfer of web pages. HTTP is most commonly used to GET content and POST data. But it can also be used to PUT and DELETE data, as well as get HEADer information, etc.

jrista
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    If `REST` is `HTTP`, then why does the term `REST` exist? – Ian Boyd Sep 05 '11 at 05:56
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    REST generally refers to a service and software development paradigm, where as HTTP refers to a specific wire protocol. – jrista Sep 05 '11 at 17:48
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    REST is not HTTP. REST is protocol unspecific. Here is a post from the guy who coined the term talking specifically about how your HTTP API is not REST. http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven – Andrew Martinez Jan 08 '13 at 21:43
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A resource lots of people are reffering to when talking about REST is "How I explained REST to my wife" altough it's some sort of general overview and not related to WCF.

There is also Restful.NET by Jon Flanders which is quite good as far as I know (haven't read it myself :() and it's examples are based on WCF.

With best regards.

leen
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  • I don't believe that book describes REST accurately, I'd recommend reading the dissertation (http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm) and then going from there. – Colin Jack Jan 23 '10 at 13:25
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Whole section of MSDN dedicated to just this.

This blog post by Shiju Varghese also gives a pretty decent beginner overview.

Matthew Vines
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Here is a link that I used to get up to speed on REST and WCF

Justin
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I found this article helpful for illustrating the basics:
How to GET a Cup of Coffee (InfoQ)

It gives examples of the HTTP requests and responses, what they look like and how they apply to actual business-centric actions. What does the REST message look like when placing an order? updating an order? Searching for an order? etc.

It is not based on any programming language or API (I don't consider HTTP to be an API).

Cheeso
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Maybe... this ? (REST on Wikipedia)

Boris Guéry
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