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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Serious REST, June 1, 2010
This review is from: RESTful Web Services Cookbook: Solutions for Improving Scalability and Simplicity (Paperback)
As is common with O'Reilly's Cookbooks, the style of this book is very terse and to the point. There is not much handholding. The intended audience seems to be system architects who already know what they are doing, but who need to know what they should be aiming for when they want to be RESTful. The "recipes" in this Cookbook are more like Best Practices, since figuring out how to implement them is left as an excercise for the reader.
Compared to my previous readings on REST, this book strongly emphasizes the use of consistent XML formats. For me, this was the most important lesson in the book. It is not enough to just use PUT and DELETE: in order to really think in terms of "representations," you need to design meaningful XML. Along these lines, Allamaraju's discussion of the Atom protocol is particularly interesting.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to read, packed full of details and great presentation., August 3, 2011
This review is from: RESTful Web Services Cookbook: Solutions for Improving Scalability and Simplicity (Paperback)
I had been following "What is REST" tutorials online for the last few weeks as I was working on an API for an upcoming SaaS product. Unfortunately there were still some nitty-gritty details behind the tenants of RESTful design that weren't clicking in my brain, making it hard for me to really grok if I was following the intended design guidelines correctly or just faking it like so many other services do.
Picking this book up after a recommendation from an HN reader, I got 4 chapters in before the smoke cleared in my brain and I had multiple "Ah ha!" moments such that the whole concept cleared up for me in a matter of days.
It could be the writing style or presentation, but I just found it really easy to digest and answering all my questions as they popped up in my head.
An excellent resource for anyone else working on RESTful API design.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very useful if you already understand REST., October 5, 2010
This review is from: RESTful Web Services Cookbook: Solutions for Improving Scalability and Simplicity (Paperback)
This book is not for learning what REST is or how to get started with REST in a particular technology (like WCF). Instead, as written in the book, it is for designers and developers of RESTful services. However, that does not mean beginners should avoid it. For me, it's quite the opposite. I find this book very useful while I'm learning REST.
I purchased this book to go along with learning WCF and creating services for Android and iOS. I knew it is not an introduction to REST. I use it to help supplement what I learn. By seeing the practical implementations, with context, in this book, I get a better understanding of how to implement REST services and how the "theory" of REST works in actual software systems. I also find it useful to rely on this book for relatively common operations. It is a great way to get started with developing RESTful services.
I appreciate what this book offers. It provides a starting point for developing REST services for those who are familiar with REST but want to get started quickly. It is also similar to a design patterns book in that it describes solutions to common problems. In this way, the book allows you to skip solving the basic problems. Instead, you can adapt the solutions provided in the book to your specific situations.
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