What are resources in REST?
Resources are the basic building block of a RESTful service. Examples of a resource from an online book store application include a book, an order from a store, and a collection of users. Resources are addressable by URLs and HTTP methods can perform operations on resources.
How can we identify resources in REST?
Designing Identifiers The rest of the URI path identifies the API’s resource model. Each forward slash separated path segment within the URI corresponds to a unique resource in the model’s hierarchy. It is also used to indicate a hierarchical relationship between resources.
What is a HTTP resource?
The target of an HTTP request is called a “resource”, whose nature isn’t defined further; it can be a document, a photo, or anything else. Each resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) used throughout HTTP for identifying resources.
How are resources defined in a RESTful API?
It is the responsibility of the API code to merge the application data together with the REST metadata and the other data into a single resource, resolving possible naming conflicts that may arise. We have defined resources, and defined the data associated with them in terms of the JSON data model.
What happens if HTTP PUT does not create a resource?
If the target resource does not have a current representation and the PUT successfully creates one, then the origin server MUST inform the user agent by sending a 201 (Created) response.
Can a resource be contained in a sub-collection?
Collections can exist globally, at the top level of an API, but can also be contained inside a single resource. In the latter case, we refer to these collections as sub-collections. Sub-collections are usually used to express some kind of “contained in” relationship. We go into more detail on this in Relationships.
How are collections and resources related in an API?
Collections are themselves resources as well. Collections can exist globally, at the top level of an API, but can also be contained inside a single resource. In the latter case, we refer to these collections as sub-collections. Sub-collections are usually used to express some kind of “contained in” relationship.