Yesterday’s post on TechCrunch about ProgrammableWeb’s API directory reaching a milestone of 1000 APIs (slightly higher as of today)… was a quick and interesting read. However, what raised my eyebrow was the chart representing the protocols used in these tracked APIs.
From the chart below (courtesy of TechCrunch) it appears that 63% of APIs were based on the REST protocol. I have to admit that my understanding was that most API’s today are SOAP based… and this chart was quite a surprise.
REST or ‘Representational State Transfer’, refers to a stateless protocol for the client-server model… in which transfer of information is both cacheable and layered. I believe it’s a natural complementor to AJAX, which sort of explains why so many of the APIs are RESTful… as the majority of the APIs tracked probably rely on an AJAX based interface.
Both ‘Representational State Transfer’ and REST were coined by Roy Fielding who was one of the guys who specced out the HTTP protocol… and you can read more about it here… and see how REST and AJAX interact here.
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