Authors:
Arne Koschel
1
;
Irina Astrova
2
;
Maximilian Blankschyn
1
;
Dominik Schöner
1
and
Kevin Schulze
1
Affiliations:
1
Faculty IV, Department of Computer Science, Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Ricklinger Stadtweg 120, 30459 Hannover and Germany
;
2
Department of Software Science, School of IT, Tallinn University of Technology, Akadeemia tee 21, 12618 Tallinn and Estonia
Keyword(s):
REST (Representational State Transfer), RESTful, API (Application Programming Interface), Richardson Maturity Model.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Internet Technology
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
;
Web Services and Web Engineering
Abstract:
Nowadays, REST is the most dominant architectural style of choice at least for newly created web services. So called RESTfulness is thus really a catchword for web application, which aim to expose parts of their functionality as RESTful web services. But are those web services RESTful indeed? This paper examines the RESTfulness of ten popular RESTful APIs (including Twitter and PayPal). For this examination, the paper defines REST, its characteristics as well as its pros and cons. Furthermore, Richardson's Maturity Model is shown and utilized to analyse those selected APIs regarding their RESTfulness. As an example, a simple, RESTful web service is provided as well.