RESTful design

ChatGPT answers "What does RESTful design refer to?":

RESTful design, or Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style for designing networked applications. It was introduced by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation in 2000. REST is not a protocol but rather a set of constraints and principles that, when applied to a system, help create scalable, maintainable, and loosely coupled web services.

Here are the key principles of RESTful design:

1. Stateless Communication:

   • Each request from a client to a server must contain all the information needed to understand and fulfill the request. The server should not store any information about the client between requests. Each request from a client to a server must contain all the information needed to understand and fulfill the request.

2. Client-Server Architecture:

   • The client and server are separate entities that communicate over a network. The client is responsible for the user interface and user experience, while the server is responsible for processing requests, managing resources, and handling business logic.

3. Uniform Interface:

   • RESTful APIs should have a consistent and uniform interface. This principle is further divided into several constraints:
     • Resource Identification: Resources (such as data objects or services) are identified by URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers).
     • Resource Manipulation through Representations: Resources are manipulated using representations, and these representations can be in various formats (e.g., JSON, XML).
     • Self-Descriptive Messages: Each message from the server to the client should include enough information to describe how to process the message.
     • Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS): Clients interact with the application entirely through hypermedia provided dynamically by the application servers.

4. Stateless Communication:

   • Each request from a client to a server must contain all the information needed to understand and fulfill the request. The server should not store any information about the client between requests.

5. Cacheability:

   • Responses from the server can be explicitly marked as cacheable or non-cacheable. This improves efficiency and scalability by allowing clients to cache responses.

6. Layered System:

   • A client cannot ordinarily tell whether it is connected directly to the end server or to an intermediary along the way. Intermediary servers (proxies, gateways, etc.) can be added to improve scalability or enforce security without impacting the client.

RESTful design is commonly used in the development of web services, including APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for IoT devices, web applications, and mobile applications. It emphasizes simplicity, scalability, and the decoupling of components, making it a popular choice for building distributed systems on the web.