fielding quotes

Selected Fielding Quotes on REST

• "REST is a hybrid style derived from several of the network-based architectural styles described in Chapter 3 and combined with additional constraints that define a uniform connector interface." ref
• "The Representational State Transfer (REST) style is an abstraction of the architectural elements within a distributed hypermedia system. REST ignores the details of component implementation and protocol syntax in order to focus on the roles of components, the constraints upon their interaction with other components, and their interpretation of significant data elements. It encompasses the fundamental constraints upon components, connectors, and data that define the basis of the Web architecture, and thus the essence of its behavior as a network-based application." ref
• "REST is an architectural style that, when followed, allows components to carry out their functions in a way that maximizes the most important architectural properties of a multi-organizational, network-based information system. In particular, it maximizes the growth of identified information within that system, which increases the utility of the system as a whole." ref
• "REST is software design on the scale of decades: every detail is intended to promote software longevity and independent evolution. Many of the constraints are directly opposed to short-term efficiency." ref
• "API designers, please note the following rules before calling your creation a REST API..." ref
• "REST provides a set of architectural constraints that, when applied as a whole, emphasizes scalability of component interactions, generality of interfaces, independent deployment of components, and intermediary components to reduce interaction latency, enforce security, and encapsulate legacy systems." ref
• "I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass about architectural purity unless it achieves a pure purpose. The purpose of REST is to explain why you want to build it in a certain way given the Web’s own context. If that context doesn’t exactly match a new application’s context, then the goal of my dissertation is to teach people how to think about the problem in terms of trade-offs, not in terms of rigid repetition of what works for the Web." ref