Chapter 4. REST and JSON Support in BizTalk Server 2013

Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them

--Spock, Star Trek

Representable State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for developing software services, based on the HTTP transport protocol. The first edition of this book did not go into great detail on REST, however, in this edition, we will cover the fundamentals of REST-based services and the BizTalk WCF-WebHttp adapter.

REST's popularity is mainly due to its familiarity among those who perform website development. It allows a developer to consume a web service in the client's browser using languages such as Ajax or jQuery instead of processing the request server side.

Also with the rise of smart devices, such as mobile phones and tablets, which favor lightweight messages, REST services have gained momentum.

Most cloud-based services now offer REST APIs to use their services.

In this chapter, you will learn:

• Why REST services are gaining preference over SOAP-based services
• What URL resources are and how best to structure them
• Different techniques of versioning a REST-based service
• How to publish and consume REST-based services using the WCF-WebHttp adapter, and how to handle XML- and JSON-formatted messages