RESTful API

A RESTful API is a web service that follows REST (Representational State Transfer) principles, enabling communication between systems using HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.

A RESTful API is an application programming interface (API) that adheres to the principles of REST (Representational State Transfer), a set of architectural guidelines for designing networked applications. RESTful APIs use standard HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to perform operations on resources, which are represented by URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers).

The primary advantage of RESTful APIs is their simplicity and scalability. They are stateless, meaning that each request from a client to the server must contain all the information needed to understand and process the request. This makes RESTful APIs ideal for distributed systems and cloud-based applications where scalability is crucial.

RESTful APIs are commonly used to power web services, mobile applications, and microservices architectures. For example, a RESTful API might allow a mobile app to retrieve a list of products from an online store, add items to a shopping cart, or process a payment.

In summary, RESTful APIs provide a standardized and efficient way for systems to communicate over the web, leveraging the simplicity of HTTP and the flexibility of resource-based architecture.