REST

REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for designing networked applications, defined by Roy Fielding in his 2000 doctoral dissertation. REST uses stateless communication, standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH), and resource-oriented URLs to provide scalable, cacheable, and loosely coupled interfaces. It has become the dominant approach for building web APIs, forming the foundation of modern API design principles and tooling ecosystems.

4 APIs 0 Features

API DesignArchitectureHTTPRESTRESTfulWeb Services

APIs

REST Architectural Style

Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style originally defined by Roy Fielding. REST provides six guiding constraints: client-server separation, statelessne...

OpenAPI Specification

The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand capabilities of...

HTTP Semantics

RFC 9110 defines the semantics of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the foundation of the World Wide Web and RESTful API communication, including methods, status codes, he...

JSON:API

JSON:API is a specification for how a client should request that resources be fetched or modified, and how a server should respond to those requests, built on top of REST princi...

Pricing Plans

Rest Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits

Rest Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps

Rest Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies

Rest Context

9 classes · 5 properties

JSON-LD

JSON Structure

Rest Architecture Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Resources

Sources

aid: rest
name: REST
description: REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for designing networked applications, defined
  by Roy Fielding in his 2000 doctoral dissertation. REST uses stateless communication, standard HTTP methods (GET, POST,
  PUT, DELETE, PATCH), and resource-oriented URLs to provide scalable, cacheable, and loosely coupled interfaces. It has become
  the dominant approach for building web APIs, forming the foundation of modern API design principles and tooling ecosystems.
type: Index
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
tags:
- API Design
- Architecture
- HTTP
- REST
- RESTful
- Web Services
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/rest/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-05-02'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: rest:rest-architectural-style
  name: REST Architectural Style
  description: 'Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style originally defined by Roy Fielding. REST
    provides six guiding constraints: client-server separation, statelessness, cacheability, uniform interface, layered system,
    and optional code-on-demand. Any API conforming to these constraints is considered RESTful.'
  humanURL: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm
  tags:
  - Architecture
  - HTTP
  - REST
  - Web Services
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm
  - type: Specification
    url: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231
- aid: rest:openapi-specification
  name: OpenAPI Specification
  description: The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs which allows
    both humans and computers to discover and understand capabilities of a service without access to source code, documentation,
    or network traffic inspection.
  humanURL: https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html
  tags:
  - API Design
  - API Documentation
  - OpenAPI
  - Specification
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification
- aid: rest:http-semantics
  name: HTTP Semantics
  description: RFC 9110 defines the semantics of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the foundation of the World Wide
    Web and RESTful API communication, including methods, status codes, headers, and content negotiation.
  humanURL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110
  tags:
  - HTTP
  - RFC
  - Semantics
  - Standards
  properties:
  - type: Specification
    url: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110
- aid: rest:json-api
  name: JSON:API
  description: JSON:API is a specification for how a client should request that resources be fetched or modified, and how
    a server should respond to those requests, built on top of REST principles with conventions for relationships, pagination,
    filtering, and sparse fieldsets.
  humanURL: https://jsonapi.org
  tags:
  - API Design
  - JSON
  - REST
  - Specification
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://jsonapi.org/format/
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/json-api/json-api
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/rest-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://restfulapi.net
- type: Specification
  url: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm
- type: RFC
  url: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110
- type: OpenAPI
  url: https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html
- type: Tutorials
  url: https://restfulapi.net/rest-api-tutorial/
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification
- type: Tooling
  url: https://openapi.tools
- type: JSONSchema
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/rest/refs/heads/main/json-schema/rest-api-schema.json
- type: Vocabulary
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/rest/refs/heads/main/vocabulary/rest-vocabulary.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com