It's not SOAP

Everyone hates SOAP. Why?

• Complex URLs
• Complex tag names, namespaces etc.
• Complex interactions, multiple requests
• Every SOAP interface is different

Resources

• Everything is a resource
• You can only get, edit, add and delete resources
• There are no "commands"
• Resources are in collections

Identifiers

• Unique identifier per resource
  E.g. http://example.com/poems/a-question
• Collections have identifiers too
  E.g. http://example.com/poems

Methods

• GET - fetch a representation of a resource
  (NOTHING IS CHANGED)
• PUT - overwrite or create a resource
  (REPEATING HAS NO EFFECT)
• POST - add a new resource
• DELETE - remove a resource
  (REPEATING HAS NO EFFECT)

Principles

• All about resources
• Stateless - requests are independent
• Self-describing, hyperlinked
• Cacheable
• Layerable (proxies, gateways, firewalls)

Advantages

• Simple
• Scalable
• General
• Independent layers
• Visible

Limitations

• It's not RPC
• No operations, just resources

More info

Videos	youtube.com/user/ajbalaam
Twitter	@andybalaam
Blog	artificialworlds.net/blog
Projects	artificialworlds.net