WEB-SERVICE. RESTFUL ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Network technology for interaction between two applications via the HTTP protocol was considered in article.When client works with REST API - it means it works with "resources", and in SOAP work is performed with operations. To build REST web services, you must follow certain principles: explicit use of HTTP methods, access to resources by URI, stateless, HATEAOS, caching, transfer of objects in JSON or XML representation. But sometimes some principles are ignored to ensure a higher speed of work and to reduce development time.The pros and cons of using JSON and XML representations were considered, and it can be said that using the JSON format reduces the amount of data transfer, and with the use of XML, the readability of data increases.Also, two main ways of data transfer in REST web services were considered: converting the file to Base64 and transferring it as an object field or transferring the file using the usual HTTP multipart. The Base64 standard approach gives a higher speed for multiple files in a single request, because only one HTTP connection is created, but these files are stored in RAM during request processing, which increases chance of the application crashing.In the conclusion, the advantages of using web services and their wide use in other architectural approaches were considered, which increases the popularity of web services.