The REST API

The name Representational state transfer (REST) was coined by Roy Fielding from the University of California. It is a very simplified and lightweight web service compared to SOAP. Performance, scalability, simplicity, portability, and flexibility are the main principles behind the REST design. 

The REST API allows different systems to communicate and send/receive data in a very simple way. Each and every REST API call has a relation between an HTTP verb and the URL. The resources in the database in an application can be mapped with an API endpoint in the REST architecture.

When you are using a mobile app on your phone, your phone might be talking to many cloud services to retrieve, update, or delete your data. REST services have a huge impact on our daily lives.

REST is a stateless, cacheable, and simple architecture that is not a protocol, but a pattern. This pattern allows different endpoints to communicate with each other over HTTP.