RESTFul Web Services

The Easy Way

What is REST?
Representational State Transfer Maps your CRUD actions to HTTP verbs
Action
Create Retrieve Update Delete

Verb
POST GET PUT DELETE

Why REST?
Simple, both conceptually and programmatically Simpler and cleaner than SOAP

SOAP Example
POST /InStock HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.org Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: nnn <?xml version="1.0"?> <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope" soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding"> <soap:Body xmlns:m="http://www.example.org/stock"> <m:GetStockPrice> <m:StockName>IBM</m:StockName> </m:GetStockPrice> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>

REST Example
GET /stock/IBM HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.org Accept: application/xml

SOAP Example 2
POST /InStock HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.org Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: nnn <?xml version="1.0"?> <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope" soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding"> <soap:Body xmlns:m="http://www.example.org/stock"> <m:BuyStock> <m:StockName>IBM</m:StockName> <m:Quantity>50</m:Quantity> </m:BuyStock> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>

REST Example 2
POST /order HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.org Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8 <?xml version="1.0"?> <order> <StockName>IBM</StockName> <Quantity>50</Quantity> </order>

Single Resource Summary

Create
POST /resourceName

Retrieve
GET /resourceName/resourceId

Update
PUT /resourceName/resourceId

Delete
DELETE /resourceName/resourceId

Making it Easy: JSR 311

JAX-RS: The Java API for RESTful Web Services No XML Configuration!
Simple annotations to quickly put together some rest based web services.

Can do automatic serialization (both XML and JSON + many others)

Example Application w/ Jersey

Some REST/Jersey/JAXB Gotchas

No real security standard for REST.
Mostly DIY solutions

Hibernate dependencies
Use cg-lib-nodeps

Questions?

The End
Sean is reachable at: iam@seanstoppable.com www.crazyorgenius.com @ssmith