What are REST resources?

rest api terminology
Emanuil Rusev picture Emanuil Rusev · May 29, 2012 · Viewed 51.3k times · Source

What are REST resources and how do they relate to resource names and resource representations?

I read a few articles on the subject, but they were too abstract and they left me more confused than I was before.

Is the following URL a resource? If it is, what is the name of that resource and what is its representation?

http://api.example.com/users.json?length=2&offset=5

The GET response of the URL should look something like:

[
   {
      id: 6,
      name: "John"
   },
   {
      id: 7,
      name: "Jane"
   }
]

Answer

JeremyP picture JeremyP · May 29, 2012

The reason why articles on REST resources are abstract is because the concept of a REST resource is abstract. It's basically "whatever thing is accessed by the URL you supply". So, in your example, the resource would be the list of two users starting at offset 5 in some bigger list. Note that, how the resource is implemented is a detail you don't care about unless you are the one writing the implementation.

Is the following URL a resource?

The URL is not a resource, it is a label that identifies the resource, it is, if you like, the name of the resource.

The JSON is a representation of the resource.

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