Representational State Transfer (Software architecture)

REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created in 2000 to guide the development of the World Wide Web. REST is defined as a set of six constraints for the ideal architecture of a distributed, Internet-scale hypermedia system such as the Web: Client/Server, Stateless, Cache, Uniform Interface, Layered System, and Code on Demand. (See The six constraints, below.) The motivation for these six constraints is to grant the system desirable properties such as modularity, scalability, latency-reduction, security, and compatibility with legacy systems. (See Implied architectural properties.) REST has been used to create stateless, reliable, web-based applications. An application that adheres to the REST architectural constraints may be informally described as RESTful, although this term is more commonly associated with the design of HTTP-based APIs and what are widely considered best practices regarding the "commands" (HTTP methods) a resource responds to, while having little to do with REST as originally formulated—and is often even at odds with the concept.