Talk:REST/Archive 4

Article could really use more of an example early on and less of a giant wall of text
I was explaining to an intern what REST was and I thought I'd send them this but holy crap this wouldn't be helpful. Early on in the article it should show an example where a get or post is called and some JSON is passed. Yes I know that technically it doesn't have to be and bla bla bla bla but in "basically what is it and how are people using the term" REALLY early on (like most other comp sci articles) it should have this. I'd add it myself but I've learned that articles with long talk pages are best not edited because some opinionated person will start an edit war...Just consider "would this actually help explain this" if someone asked "What is REST?" without already knowing it basically...and "what would make it actually work for that?" and I think you'll see what I mean Reboot (talk) 15:20, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you thinking of AJAX? --Nigelj (talk) 14:52, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Apparently you talking to your intern about Web APIs and for some reason you were compelled to inject the term REST. Pasado (talk) 23:23, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

First sentence should not include HTTP in the definition.
"Representational state transfer (REST) is a software architectural style which uses a subset of HTTP."

Is the use of HTTP a necessary condition of a RESTful architecture? From Fielding's dissertation: "For example, the Web's primary transfer protocol is HTTP, but the architecture also includes seamless access to resources that originate on pre-existing network servers, including FTP [107], Gopher [7], and WAIS [36]. " https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm

In practice, REST might all but imply HTTP, but the communication protocol is just an implementation detail with respect to the architectural style, no? Should this first sentence be rewritten? I'm not expert enough to propose an alternative, but this seems problematic.

will (talk) 14:44, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Add other HTTP methods
Should other HTTP request methods be included in the Semantics of HTTP Methods section? PATCH seems important, for example, when updating a target with limited representation, as opposed to creating/replacing with PUT.

Owenjpgallagher (talk) 17:59, 17 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm missing PATCH here as well. Theking2 (talk) 08:48, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * ...and OPTIONS. I don't think it needs more than that Theking2 (talk) 08:49, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

It’n not too technical. It’s technobabble!
I’m an professional in this area since 1998, and designed many ”modern“ web functionalities and concepts myself, years before they got adopted everywhere, and … the first paragraphs read exactly like corporate nonsense, technobabble edition, that you’d read from one of those ”enterprisey“ consultant types we ridiculed at thedailywtf.com. They mean nothing. It is a huge sign of certain pseudo-competent tech-bros usually found in large consulting firms, startups, and tech scammers (e.g. WeWork). The WhatWG is well-known for being right in the middle of that luddite-techie cesspit, ever since Google started it to circumvent the W3C, kill all other browsers and ruin the web.

So don’t worry, it’s not that it was too technical and hard to understand. It actually was just plain nonsense. At least up to where I stopped wasting my time reading it.

By the way, you can verify my claim by checking how emotional, devoid of actual arguments, and triggered those types get, when you call a spade a spade and it pops their reality distrortion bubble. Compare: Muskites, Jobsians, etc.

REST is just yet another spawn of the inner-platform effect behind everying ”modern web“, and can in all cases be replaced by an already existing protocol, several layers lower to the meal. (Compare: Sockets -> webSockets. Same type of insanity.) 89.0.49.62 (talk) 00:20, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Not too technical. Too bullshit.
As an experienced programmer, I can recognize this buzzword salad from miles away. It’s exactly the stuff that enterprisey consultants say that we make fun of at TheDailyWTF.com. It is deliberately non-understandable, because it does not actually make sense. The article needs a chemo to get rid of that nonsense, then it will be understandable. — 2A0A:A546:C344:1:5A08:8CBB:F7EC:A5DC (talk) 23:47, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree. Somebody who has passing familiarity with REST should write a much smaller article with just a few examples. This is atrocious, and I'm in favour of scrapping the whole thing. --Svennik (talk) 19:53, 26 October 2022 (UTC)