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The Internet Compass

Engineering

REST API

A REST API is an interface architected around resources identified by URLs and manipulated through standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH and DELETE) with stateless requests.

REST's advantage is that it works with the existing web: HTTP caching, proxies, status codes and standard tooling all apply without adaptation.

Its weakness is over-fetching and under-fetching: clients receive whole resources when they wanted three fields, or must make several round trips to assemble one view.