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this is all Philip's fault

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Mark Pilgrim
2010-02-11 14:38:53 -05:00
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<p id=toc>&nbsp;
<h2 id=divingin>Diving In</h2>
<p class=f>HTTP web services are programmatic ways of sending and receiving data from remote servers using nothing but the operations of <abbr>HTTP</abbr>. If you want to get data from the server, use <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>GET</code>; if you want to send new data to the server, use <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>POST</code>. Some more advanced <abbr>HTTP</abbr> web service <abbr>API</abbr>s also allow creating, modifying, and deleting data, using <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>PUT</code> and <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>DELETE</code>. In other words, the &#8220;verbs&#8221; built into the <abbr>HTTP</abbr> protocol (<code>GET</code>, <code>POST</code>, <code>PUT</code>, and <code>DELETE</code>) can map directly to application-level operations for retrieving, creating, modifying, and deleting data.
<p class=f>Philosophically, I can describe HTTP web services in 12 words: exchanging data with remote servers using nothing but the operations of <abbr>HTTP</abbr>. If you want to get data from the server, use <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>GET</code>. If you want to send new data to the server, use <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>POST</code>. Some more advanced <abbr>HTTP</abbr> web service <abbr>API</abbr>s also allow creating, modifying, and deleting data, using <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>PUT</code> and <abbr>HTTP</abbr> <code>DELETE</code>. That&#8217;s it. No registries, no envelopes, no wrappers, no tunneling. The &#8220;verbs&#8221; built into the <abbr>HTTP</abbr> protocol (<code>GET</code>, <code>POST</code>, <code>PUT</code>, and <code>DELETE</code>) map directly to application-level operations for retrieving, creating, modifying, and deleting data.
<p>The main advantage of this approach is simplicity, and its simplicity has proven popular. Data&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;usually <a href=xml.html><abbr>XML</abbr></a> or <a href=serializing.html#json><abbr>JSON</abbr></a>&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;can be built and stored statically, or generated dynamically by a server-side script, and all major programming languages (including Python, of course!) include an <abbr>HTTP</abbr> library for downloading it. Debugging is also easier; because each resource in an <abbr>HTTP</abbr> web service has a unique address (in the form of a <abbr>URL</abbr>), you can load it in your web browser and immediately see the raw data.