Chapter 9. RESTful web services

This chapter covers

  • The REST architectural style
  • Implementing REST in Java using JAX-RS
  • Using a Groovy client to access RESTful services
  • Hypermedia

RESTful web services dominate API design these days, because they provide a convenient mechanism for connecting client and server applications in a highly decoupled manner. Mobile applications especially use RESTful services, but a good RESTful design mimics the characteristics that made the web so successful in the first place.

After discussing REST in general, I’ll talk about the server side, then about the client side, and finally the issue of hypermedia. Figures 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3 show the different technologies in this chapter.

Figure 9.1. Server-side ...

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