How RESTful Are Web Frameworks That Claim REST Support?

Posted by Dilip Krishnan on Jul 13, 2010

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There are plenty of web services platforms/application frameworks available today that support RESTful services to varying degrees. In a recent post Stefan Tilkov puts out a list of criteria that serves as a starting point in evaluating these frameworks and platforms.

He Proposes that, at a high level, the questions one must ask are are (the more “yes”s for the answers the closer a framework is to an ideal REST web application framework).

• Does the framework respect that an HTTP message does not only consist of a URI? I.e., is dispatch done at least based on the HTTP verb, the URI, the Content-type and Accept headers?
• Can I easily use the same business logic while returning different content types in the response?
• Is there support for checking for conditional requests?
• Are ETags calculated automatically if none are set by the backend logic?
• Can I (as a framework user) easily read all HTTP request headers?
• Can I easily set all HTTP response headers?
• Can I use custom HTTP verbs?
• Is it obvious and easy how to return correct status codes with responses, and does the framework use them correctly (if it does so at all)?

Mike Amundsen suggests additions to the REST Litmus Test for Web Frameworks list, He suggests that the various components of a URI the path and the query string, carry the same weight to distinguish a resource from another. He quotes Roy T. Fielding on REST-Discuss, 2002,

[F]or server-constructed URI, there is no effective difference between query and path info -- both distinguish a resource.

A few prominent web frameworks that support developing RESTful services are:

Java

• Project Jersey
• Restlet Framework
• JBoss RESTEasy
• Apache Wink
• RESTx
• Spring MVC 3.0

.net

• WCF Data Services
• Open RASTA

Ruby

• Ruby on Rails

Python

• Django

Do add your comments so we can maintain an updated list of frameworks and platforms for building RESTful services. Be sure to visit  the original post for details.

1. Back to top

   Same initiative

   by Alex Popescu

   After reading Stefan's post I've had the same initiative asking around what web frameworks are really passing this test. So, far the answers I've got are:
   
   - JAX-RS implementations
   - webmachine (Erlang/Basho)
   
   While I'm not very familiar with either Django and Ruby on Rails, as far as I know both of them will have problems with at least the 1st test (and I think Django is not passing the 2nd test either, as it is more of an action based framework).
   
   :- alex

   Reply

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   another one

   by lo vuikeng

   Don't forget SpringMVC 3.0

   Reply

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   Re: Same initiative

   by James Watson

   I'm a big fan of JAX-RS (Jersey). I'd even want to use it to implement non-restful services. It's really quite nice.

   Reply

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   Apache CXF

   by David Karr

   I find Apache CXF to be a very good JAX-RS implementation (it also provides a JAX-WS implementation).

   Reply

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   Re: another one

   by Dilip Krishnan

   Thanks! updated the post.

   Reply

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   What about HATEOS?

   by Michael Pilone

   I would suggest adding HATEOS support to the list of REST framework criteria. I haven't seen a good framework yet that easily supports the idea of returning URIs to other resources without requiring you to write custom views that render your internal domain objects to "restful" responses. The Restfulie GEM in RoR is at least trying to provide an implementation but it isn't there yet.
   
   For example, look at something like the Netflix API which appears to support HATEOS very well. I'm assuming they implemented a lot of custom code internally to get that behavior.
   
   -mike

   Reply

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   Re: What about HATEOS?

   by Shimon Amit

   Excellent point.

   Reply

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   Re: What about HATEOS?

   by Tero Vaananen

   Resfulie supports HATEOAS.

   Reply

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   Lift Framework?

   by Jim K

   I'm surprised no one has mentioned Lift yet.

   Reply

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    Re: What about HATEOS?

    by James Watson

    I'm interested in seeing how they approach this but something went wrong. They are sorry.
    
    restfulie.caelum.com.br/restful_java

    Reply

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    RESTx

    by Ross Mason

    I just wanted to point out that RESTx is both Java and Python. Developers can write components (that can be used to create resources) in both languages and we're looking to add support for Groovy and Ruby, plus a JavaScript client.
    
    It is still early days for the project but would love to get your feedback on it.
    
    Ross (at mulesoft dot com)

    Reply

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    Re: What about HATEOS?

    by Juergen Brendel

    RESTx does support HATEAOS. It does so in two ways: First, all the components and resources on a server can be discovered just by following links. Secondly, component authors may use a built-in facility to store items, which can be viewed as a collection. If so desired, a request to this collection returns a list of all resources. When a new resource is created, the "202 Created" response is returned with a link to the new resource.

    Reply

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    Re: What about HATEOS?

    by Julian Browne

    I'm interested in seeing how they approach this but something went wrong. They are sorry.
    
    restfulie.caelum.com.br/restful_java

    
    
    Though, to be fair, they will take a look at it shortly.

    Reply

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    Re: What about HATEOS?

    by Rafael de F. Ferreira

    RESTfulie java can be found at:
    
    github.com/caelum/restfulie-java#readme

    Reply

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    Re: Spring MVC's REST Capabilities

    by Keith Donald

    If you'd like to see how Spring MVC stacks up, checkout the following showcase:
    
    blog.springsource.com/2010/07/22/spring-mvc-3-s...
    
    Keith

    Reply

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    Re: What about HATEOS?

    by Guilherme Silveira

    The link is an old one, where did you find it so we can update it?
    
    Regards

    Reply