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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

REST

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/rest/abbreviationCommon term

In software engineering, REST means: Short for representational state transfer: a common style for web APIs in which resources have URLs and are handled with HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.

In Turkish: temsili durum aktarımı

How it is used

People say 'REST API', 'RESTful service' and 'REST endpoint'. Discussions often compare REST with GraphQL or gRPC, or argue about whether an API is 'really' RESTful.

Example sentences

  1. The mobile team prefers a REST API because their tools support it well.

  2. In a RESTful design, you'd use DELETE /orders/42 instead of POST /deleteOrder.

Common collocations

  • REST API
  • RESTful service
  • REST endpoint
  • REST principles
  • APIShort for application programming interface: a set of rules that lets one program ask another program for data or actions in a fixed, documented way.
  • endpointA specific URL of an API that accepts requests for one kind of action, such as GET /users to list users or POST /orders to create an order.
  • JSONShort for JavaScript Object Notation: a simple text format for data, made of key-value pairs and lists, used by most web APIs.
  • status codeA three-digit number in an HTTP response that tells the client what happened, such as 200 for success, 404 for not found or 500 for a server error.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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