Chapter 4. Web services explained
- HTTP fundamentals
- REST web services
- HTTP traffic
- Web API best practices
- Troubleshooting
Now that you’re familiar with what APIs do and have some overall idea about the strategy, let’s dive deeper into the technical aspects of HTTP and REST so that you understand how these systems work together. Knowing these details will also help you when you want to troubleshoot or understand how the interactions are working between a client and server.
Note that in order to grasp how HTTP matters in the API context, you need to know the protocol and practices from the point of view of the consumers—your developer partners. So while you’re working to make a great API, understanding the interactions between client-server transactions from the point of view of a developer who is consuming the service is illuminating. This chapter is designed to give you a view of the user side of HTTP so that you can determine how the pieces fit together in an API. This chapter will provide an understanding of how APIs work, which is necessary to build APIs people love.