Showing posts with label http. Show all posts
Showing posts with label http. Show all posts

Monday, 29 October 2012

SOAP vs REST web services


Comparing SOAP to REST for building web services is a bit like comparing apples with pears: SOAP is a protocol, REST is a pattern, and you could, if you felt so inclined, write RESTful services using SOAP.  However, when people ask this question, they usually mean: SOAP (as in WSDL, perhaps RPC style, WS-* standards), as opposed to REST (as in JSON/XML over HTTP)

Assuming you mean this, below are some pros and cons for each, but note this: REST is increasingly becoming the de-facto standard across the web, being used by the big public API providers in preference to SOAP. I reckon it's just a matter of time before this question will just go away.

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Friday, 5 October 2012

REST Web Service API HTTP Response Status Codes

What HTTP status codes should your REST web service API be returning to clients?  Does it matter?  Before we launch into this topic, a quick recap of some interesting HTTP status codes:

200 - "OK"  All is well
204 - "No Content"  Nothing returned, but all is still well
400 - "Bad Request"  There is problem on the client's side
500 - "Internal Server Error" There is a problem on the server side
301 - "Moved Permanently" The resource has moved
303 - "See Other Server" Returns a URI to another resource
404 - "Not Found" Server has no clue what the client is asking for
409 - "Conflict" Client has tried to perform an operation that would leave one or more resources in an inconsistent state
401 - "Unauthorized" Client attempted access to a resource without providing the necessary authentication credentials
403 - "Forbidden" Client is not authorised to access a resource

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