InfoQ Homepage Presentations REST: I don't Think it Means What You Think it Does
REST: I don't Think it Means What You Think it Does
Summary
Stefan Tilkov makes a pragmatic introduction to the basic principles of the Web's architectural approach, and takes a look at the most common misconceptions.
Bio
Stefan Tilkov is Co-founder and Principal Consultant at innoQ, where he spends his time alternating between advising customers on new technologies and taking the blame from his co-workers for doing so. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and author of numerous articles. Twitter: @stilkov
About the conference
Begun in 2012 this now annual conference hosted in Vilnius, Lithuania brings the best of the developer world to the Baltic's. The overall theme is building stuff, we have a heavy focus on lessons from trenches from the people that were there.
Community comments
Verbs... I see verbs...
by Jean-Jacques Dubray,
Verbs... I see verbs...
by Jean-Jacques Dubray,
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Stefan,
I am glad that you finally understand the relationship between state machines and API designs. Perhaps you remember that post from 2007 and my arguments way back when. Or perhaps that one on REST versioning. ...
We don't hear much about the Uniform interface anymore... other than in Fielding's thesis, right? You didn't mention it once in your presentation. I am very surprised that such a pillar of REST is not part of your presentation!
I would argue however that your Hypermedia style is a bit anemic. What's the point of specifying an href when you need additional out-of-band information? I can appreciate the hint of the allowed actions, based on the state machine, but that's only a validation of what's possible, there is no dynamic behavior possible until either the client becomes a lot smarter or the metadata of the links is complete.
A few more years, and we won't be speaking about REST anymore, other than a moniker, synonym of HTTP.
The best advice I can give people is to unREST and stop wondering about what REST is, because after 8 painful years, Stefan still needs to give an introduction that is very different than his original introduction, what will you talk about in 8 years? That Hypermedia, well, doesn't quite work the way you thought in 2015?
The emperor has no clothes...