REST
This is when a developer takes a break.
Just kidding. (Anthony, you're not funny.) Yeah, I know. (Anthony, definition, please). Yeah, okay.
REST stands for "REpresentational State Transfer" - and, yes, they cheated on their acronym.
REST is an architectural style for describing how an API is going to work. There are several important characteristics that make a RESTful architecture desirable for developers.
Why Developers love REST
Simply put, developers like RESTful architectures because it makes an API predictable and friendly.
Today, REST is an extremely common pattern so developers can move quickly with a RESTful API. They generally know what to expect when they use a certain method with a certain endpoint - and they like that. If the API for them is simple and familiar, they can go back to focusing on their application's logic.
Important Characteristics
So you want some specifics? There are some pretty particular characteristics that a REST api needs to have:
- Uniform Interface
In a RESTful API, resources are uniquely and descriptively named. If an endpoint is named v2/dogs, we expect to use the second version of the API to do something with dogs. Additionally, this idea works when comparing routes and resources to each other. All of the POST routes for the API should post information. If you randomly run into a POST that deletes data, that would be a problem.
- Stateless
The response from the server must contain everything needed to understand and finish off the request. This has a lot of implications but the main one is that the server cannot use any stored information to complete the request (AKA no state).
- There are more.
There are still way more than this but they're outside of the scope of what we are trying to do here. There is a ton of content out there about REST and how it works so hit a quick Google now that you have a nice, basic understanding.