class: center, middle # Introducing REST APIs .copyright[ <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a> ** [Pat Pannuto](http://patpannuto.com) / Tarun Khubchandani ** ] --- # What is REST? -- ## REpresentational State Transfer -- ### Six Basic Characteristics -- - Separation between client and server - Self contained requests (stateless) - Cacheable - Layered architecture to allow intermediaries - Uniform method of communication between client and server - (Optional) Code on Demand -- ### Core Ideas - Communicate with Application Resources - Generally uses HTTP Requests --- # HTTP Requests and REST -- ## Ways to Modify Resources in REST You may recognize these as operations from relational databases... - Create - Retrieve - Update - Delete -- ## HTTP Requests | HTTP Request | Action | | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | | `POST` | Create an item/send information | | `GET` | Retrieve items from the server | | `PUT` | Update a resource | | `DELETE` | Remove a resource | | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | --- # Cool. Why should I care? -- ## Flexible - Unlike SOAP, not just contained to XML - Allows easy integration with external tools -- ## Easy to Build/Use - Pretty uniform once you know the basics - Lots of frameworks to help you out (we're going to use Flask) - Extremely scalable and lightweight -- ## It's Fun! ### Most of the services you use have an API that can be used to do cool things! --- class: center, middle # Enough talking. # Let's do something cool. Grab a copy of the [starter code](https://github.com/tarunsk/eecs398-flask-sample).