REST is a software architectural style, not a specification, for building scalable web services. Since RESTful web services do not have any strict specifications for designing and building APIs, you may find many interpretations for how the RESTful web API should work.
In this chapter, you will learn standards, best practices, conventions, and tips and tricks that you can apply to your RESTful web service applications today. Some of the important topics discussed in this chapter are as follows:
Naming RESTful web resources
Implementing partial response
Paging resource collection
Using HATEOAS in response representation
Versioning RESTful web APIs
Caching RESTful web API results
Microservice architecture style for RESTful web applications
Using Open Data Protocol with RESTful web APIs
Let's start by discussing the guidelines for identifying resources in a problem domain.