RESTful Web Services Book Review

Web Services for the Real World

If you know about web services you will know there are two main protocol techniques you can use to interact with web services, SOAP or REST. REST is the more easier technique as it uses simple HTTP GET calls together with XML and URI.

RESTful Web Services covers a range of different programming languages that you can use to create and interact with web services, these languages include PHP, C#, C++, Ruby, Perl, Java, Python and Javascript.

RESTful Web Services reveals how a RESTful design is simpler, more versatile and more scalable than a design based on Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs). RESTful Web Services also includes real-world examples of RESTful web services, like Amazon’s Simple Storage Service and the Atom Publishing Protocol.

RESTful Web Services also covers best practices to follow in order to make sure your design and implementation of web services using REST is a success. It also mentions frameworks to use for RESTful services including Ruby on Rails, Restlet and Django. Other topics include using Ajax applications as REST clients, which includes del.icio.us examples.

RESTful Web Services is a very detailed high level book on all areas of designing, interacting and using web services using REST. If you need to know anything about the REST technology then get this book, if you are programming in a certain language then this book will not show you lots of programming examnples but will cover the technical and theory side of REST. There are other books about interacting with eBay, Amazon or Google web services using web services and these cover REST and SOAP protocols.