Use REST Services
REST is an acronym of Representational State Transfer, and is the practise of building services using the semantics of the web.
A REST service request can be defined using four parameters:
- A URL which identifies the resource (for example: the learner or course)
- A verb which identifies the operation
- A message body which contains information about the operation being performed
- A collection of headers which contain miscellaneous data that the service may require
A REST service response can be defined using three parameters:
- A status code summarising the outcome of the request (for example: an error of 404 for not found)
- A body containing detail of the service response (that is: the data requested)
- A collection of headers which contain miscellaneous information about the response