A RESTful Web API (also called a RESTful Web Service) is a Web API implemented using the HTTP protocol and REST principles. It is a collection of resources, with four defined aspects:
- The base URI for the Web API, such as http://eg.com/resources/.
- The Internet media type of the data supported by the Web API. This is often JSON but can be any other valid Internet media type provided that it is a valid hypertext standard.
- The set of operations supported by the Web API using HTTP methods (e.g., GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE).
- The API must be hypertext driven.
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The PUT and DELETE methods are idempotent methods. The GET method is a safe method (or nullipotent), meaning that calling it produces no side-effects.
Unlike SOAP-based Web services, there is no standard for RESTful Web APIs. This is because REST is an architectural style, unlike SOAP, which is a protocol. Even though REST is not a standard, a RESTful implementation such as the IzoT REST API can use standards like HTTP, URI, and XML.
The following sections describe the resources exposed by the IzoT REST API. By default, all operations (e.g. GET, PUT, DELETE, etc.) are only permitted when logged into an account with suitable privileges. All resources also support the OPTIONS operation which will return information on the requested resource.
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