What's the difference between REST & RESTful

Question

What\'s the difference between a REST system and a system that is RESTful?

From a few things I\'ve read most so called REST services are actually RESTful services. S

Answer 1

REST is an style of software architecture for distributed software

Conforming to the REST constraints is referred to as being ‘RESTful’.

Very used today to build web services as an alternative to SOAP.

Here you have some links to check

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/297424/Representational_State_Transfer_REST_
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-restful/

Answer 2

REST stands for representational state transfer. That means that state itself is not transferred but a mere representation of it is. The most common example is a pure HTML server based app (no javascript). The browser knows nothing about the application itself but through links and resources, the server is able transfer the state of the application to the browser. Where a button would normally change a state variable (e.g. page open) in a regular windows application, in the browser you have a link that represents such a state change.

The idea is to use hypermedia. And perhaps to create new hypermedia types. Potentially we can expand the browser with javascript/AJAX and create new custom hypermedia types. And we would have a true REST application.

This is my short version of what REST stands for, the problem is that it is hard to implement. I personally say RESTful, when I want to make reference to the REST principles but I know I am not really implementing the whole concept of REST. We don't really say SOAPful, because you either use SOAP or not. I think most people don't do REST the way it was envisioned by it's creator Roy Fielding, we actually implement RESTful or RESTlike architectures. You can see his dissertation, and you will find the REST acronym but not the word RESTful.

Answer 3

Think of REST as an architectural "class" while RESTful is the well known "instance" of that class.

Please mind the ""; we are not dealing with "real" programming objects here.

Answer 4

A "REST service" and a "RESTful service" are one and the same.

A RESTful system is any system that follows the REST conventions as defined in the original document that created the idea of RESTful networked applications.

It's worth noting there are varying levels of RESTfulness. Overall, REST is a style, not a standard, so there is room for interpretation based on needs. one example is hierarchical resource URLs (e.g. /things/ID/relatedthings) vs flat URLs (e.g. /things/ID and /relatedthings?thing=ID)

Answer 5

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term Representational State Transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding1[2] in his doctoral dissertation. Fielding is one of the principal authors of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification versions 1.0 and 1.1. Conforming to the REST constraints is referred to as being ‘RESTful’. Source:Wikipedia

Answer 6

Web services are essentially web sites whose content is consumed by computer programs, not people. REST is a set of architectural principles that stipulate that web services should maximally leverage HTTP and other web standards, so that programs gain all the good stuff that people already can get out of the web. REST is often contrasted with SOAP web services, and other "remote procedure call" oriented web services.

Stefan Tilkov's presentations on REST at Parleys.com are quite good, especially this one.

For a book, you can't get any better than Richardson and Ruby's Restful Web Services.