Top 10 Resources for Learning REST API Development

Rest or Representational State Transfer is a popular and standard data exchange protocol that acts as an interface between two different applications integrated into a site. When it comes to creating API (Application Programming Interface) for service app development, REST is the most preferred choice. No wonder, many leading web and cloud companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube use REST APIs due to their flexibility and scalability. Availing services of experienced developers of a leading Rest API development company will help you gain maximum leverage from REST API to make web and mobile apps user-friendly.

Web developers often choose REST for API development rather than SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) which is quite complex, albeit of high capacity. If you are keen to learn ways to design APIs with REST, here is a checklist of some valuable resources you will find useful.

1. Book- Restful Web Services (Leonard Richardson)
   If you are new to this and want to learn the basics of REST web services, the book—RESTful Web Services by Leonard Richardson can be quite valuable. In this book, you will learn how REST works and many basic things related to web services with some practical examples.
2. REST API Design Rulebook by Mark Masse
   If you are looking for a concise book to learn best practices in designing REST APIs, then this Rulebook written by Mark Masse is just for you. Learn rules for designing optimal APIs. Check out guidelines for conveying metadata through HTTP headers, and learn efficient ways to employ design principles to HTTP’s request methods and response status codes.
3. Rest Cook Book
   It is a collection of amazing blog posts that will guide you about various RESTful API design patterns. Browse the website created by Joshua Thijssen and get deep knowledge about HATEOAS (Hypertext as the Engine of Application State) and its importance in REST API and other things.
4. Insomnia
   Insomnia is an intuitive, cross-platform REST and GraphQL client that works on various operating systems like Mac, Windows, and Linux. It comes with features like code generation, environment variables, cookie management, and authentication for different OS.
5. REST-Assured
   Java Developers find Rest-Assured as a reliable open-source REST testing platform that helps them test the efficiency of their REST APIs. As there is no need to design boilerplate code for testing, it saves their precious time and efforts.
6. CORS in Action by Monsur Hossain
   Want to know more about Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) from both client and server perspectives? Read this book and learn ways to deal with various elements such as performance, debugging, and security, when creating APIs.
7. REST with Spring by Eugen Paraschiv
   Eugen Paraschiv has started this online training that guides developers to developing RESTful web services using Java and Spring. Learners can learn even advanced concepts like pagination, filtering, security, error handling for their RESTful Web Services using Spring.
8. PyRestTest
   When it comes to finding a secure Python-based API testing platform for testing JSON or YAML config. files, you can rely on PyRestTest. With a few dependencies, you can deploy it on-server for smoke tests and health checks.
9. API Sandboxes
   API Sandboxes are a dedicated environment that enables developers to test new features and services by creating simulated responses from all APIs, the application relies on. Thus, it minimizes the cost and risks associated with using 3rd party APIs, before releasing any app.
10. REST API Tutorial
    Check out the mini-tutorial created by Todd Fredrich that will guide you on the six constraints of REST and quick design tips. The tutorial comes with a status code cheat sheet and other helpful open-source tools.