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REST API vocabulary

API

A set of definitions and protocols that allow technology products and services to communicate via the internet.

Application state

Information about the client’s path through an API.

Client

A computer used by a user to connect to a network and make requests to servers.

Endpoint

The endpoint of an API is a digital location where an API receives requests about a specific resource on its server.

In APIs, an endpoint is typically a uniform resource locator (URL) that provides the location of a resource on the server.

HATEOAS

One of the constraints of REST laid out by Roy Fielding.

A server offers a client a "menu" of hypermedia options that a client can choose from.

HTTP

The underlying network protocol that enables transfer of hypermedia documents on the Web, typically between a browser and a server so that humans can read them.

HTTP methods / verbs

Options given to a client for requesting or manipulating resources.

Options include: GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, DELETE, CONNECT, OPTIONS, TRACE, and PATCH.

Idempotent / idempotency

An HTTP method is idempotent if an identical request can be made more than once with the same effect without changing the state of the server.

A GET method is considered idempotent.

A POST (create) method is not considered idempotent.

Representation

A piece of data that describes the state of a resource.

Resource

In general, a resource is whatever might be identified by a URI (documents, files, images, data, etc.)

REST

Representational State Transfer

REST API

A web service that makes requests for resources through URL paths.

Server

A computer that serves many kinds of information to a user or client machine.

State

Remembered information in a computer system.

Stateless

In the client-server model, a stateless protocol means that the server does not keep any data (state) between two requests.

This is in contrast to a stateful protocol, which does keep data (state) between separate requests.

URL

A type of URI that identifies a resource and provides a means of locating the resource.

URI

Provides a simple and extensible means for identifying a resource. The identifier consists of a string of characters matching syntax rules.

A URL is a type of URI.

Sources
  • Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, DOI 10.17487/RFC2616, June 1999, https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2616.
  • MDN Web Docs
  • Richardson, L., & Ruby, S. (2013). RESTful web apis.