Web services are applications that communicate over the internet using the HTTP protocol. There are many different types of web service architectures, but the main idea across all designs is the same. In this book, we are creating a RESTful web service from what is a really popular design nowadays.
REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for creating web services. REST is not standard, but it defines a set of constraints defined by Roy Fielding. The six constraints are the following:
- Stateless: The server doesn't hold any information about the client state.
- Client server: The client and server act independently. The server does not send any information without a request from the client.
- Cacheable: Many clients often request the same resources, therefore it is useful to cache responses in order to improve performance.
- Uniform interface: Requests from different clients look the same. Clients may be, for example...