Chapter 11. The future of Restlet
This chapter covers
- State of the HTTP protocol and alternatives
- The rise of SPDY and its impact on REST, HTTP, and Restlet
- Planned enhancements to Restlet API, extensions, and editions
- Planned Restlet Studio tool for Eclipse and Restlet Cloud service
As you near the end of this book, we’ll step back and look beyond the detailed coverage of Restlet in action. This final chapter summarizes the state of HTTP and REST and introduces alternatives, such as WebSockets, Server-Sent Events or SPDY (the “SPeeDY” protocol initiated by Google), and puts them into perspective with the evolution of HTTP—in particular, the well-advanced HTTP/1.1 bis initiative.
This is a topic with a major impact on Restlet development because the Restlet API directly maps REST and HTTP concepts, as explained throughout the book and detailed in appendix E. With an HTTP/2.0 version now being planned by IETF, will the Restlet API stay relevant?
We’ll review the Restlet roadmap, including evolution of the Restlet API, packaging of the Restlet Forge for multiedition development, as well as the introduction of the broader Restlet Platform plan, including an open source Restlet Apps suite, a productivity-oriented Restlet Studio based on Eclipse IDE, and a Restlet Cloud hosting facility.