REST (Representational State Transfer) API
REST, an architectural foundation for creating networked applications, has become the most popular choice for internet APIs during the past 10 years. It leverages the popular GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE methods of the HTTP protocol to facilitate communication between clients and servers. REST is recognized for being stateless, user-friendly, and scalable, making it perfect for creating systems that are loosely connected.
Stateless communication, resource-oriented design, and a standard interface are the three main tenets of REST. RESTful APIs typically expose resources as URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) and rely on standard HTTP methods to perform operations on these resources. The response data is often represented using common formats like JSON or XML.
While REST offers simplicity and widespread support, it also has limitations. One common challenge is over-fetching or under-fetching of data, where clients receive more or less information than needed. This can impact performance and increase network traffic. REST APIs frequently have versioning and discoverability problems, which makes it more difficult to update them without harming backward compatibility.
REST API vs GraphQL API vs gRPC API
Primarily competitors in the current API designs mainly are REST, GraphQL, and gRPC where REST is extremely famous among developers as they are always experimenting with new technologies and approaches to enhance communication between services in the world of current API designs. These strategies can be used for various use cases because each has particular advantages and disadvantages. We’ll delve further into the technical details of REST, GraphQL, and gRPC in this post, emphasizing their salient traits, performance traits, and potential applications.
Now lets us discuss all of them as follows:
- REST
- GraphQL
- gRPC
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