Glossary REST
REST
Acronym Also known as:
restful, rest apiTechAPI
Definition
Representational State Transfer — Fielding's architectural style for the web: resources named by URLs, manipulated through a fixed set of verbs, with the server keeping no client state between requests
In everyday use "a REST API" means an HTTP API with nouns in the paths and GET/POST/PUT/DELETE doing what they say. Few are REST in Fielding's sense (hypermedia-driven); nearly all are RESTful enough to be useful, and the distinction rarely matters in a design review.
The shape most web APIs have, whether or not they earned the name. What a front-end developer needs from the word: the URL names a thing, the verb says what to do to it, the status code says how it went, and nothing on the server remembers you between calls.