Demystifying the REST API

I really enjoyed this talk. Samantha did a fantastic job of presenting this broad range of information in a compressed format. While it was not any new information for me personally it is the type of presentation I would like to have all of the developers on our team see first hand. REST and HTTP are not actually a complicated topics but sadly most developers are lack a fundamental understanding of both. The slide deck was comprehensive but not wordy. I would definitely attend another talk by Samantha.

My notes for this talk can be found below:

  • brief overview of what we are talking about REST
  • text/language is the greatest invention of man kind
  • text is a tool
  • text allows us to “communicate” with people who have been dead for thousands of years
  • people understand text and can use it to measure something like how large digital storage is by how many encyclopedias could fit on a disc.
  • hypertext is the second greatest invention of man kind
  • Roy Fielding – part of a working group that defined HTTP 1.0 spec. His dissertation describes REST architectural pattern
  • client (UI) <—> server (data) – separation of concerns
  • statelessness – each requests from the client to the server has to contain all information that the server needs to fulfill the request.
  • caching is use to reduce messaging overhead
  • the server should tell the client how long to cache something for. or at least provide a hash that can be used to determine if something has changed.
  • layering – any component in the system is unaware of the existence of the layers
  • code on demand – the server returns code that the client can run (ex. JavaScript, CSS)
  • JSON+HAL – an attempt to solve the issue of JSON not being a hypertext format
  • HTTP 1.1 was released in 1999 – includes 9 methods (verbs). patch and connect are not wildly used.
  • methods are grouped in two ways, safe/unsafe and idempotent
  • put vs post – read the spec
  • Beginners Guide to HTTP Caching
  • API Documentation platforms – RAML, API Blueprint, Swagger
  • Books:
    • Build APIs You Won’t Hate by Phil Sturgeon
    • RESTful Web Services by Leonard Richardson & Sam Ruby