Preface

In today's connected world, APIs have taken a central role on the Web. They provide the fabric on which systems interact with each other. And REST has become synonymous with APIs. REpresentational State Transfer, or REST, is an architectural style that lends itself well to tackling the challenges of building scalable web services.

In the Java ecosystem, the Spring Framework is the application framework of choice. It provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model that takes away the "plumbing" of enterprise applications.

It will, therefore, come as no surprise that Spring provides an ideal framework for building RESTful web services. In this book, we will take a hands-on look at how to build an enterprise-grade RESTful web service with the Spring Framework. As an underlying theme, we will illustrate the concepts in each chapter with the implementation of a sample web service that deals with managing rooms in a hotel.

By the end of this book, readers will be equipped with the necessary techniques to create a RESTful web service and sufficient knowledge to scale and secure their web service to meet production readiness requirements.