Regular readers now know all about AJAX, Django and Rails, so it’s time to mention another piece of Internet jargon that’s doing the rounds at the moment, and that’s REST, which is short for REpresentational State Transfer. It’s a model of how the web works, how it was designed, and why we should try, where possible, to build web-based services in a manner that conforms to that basic design instead of going against its grain.
It originated in Roy Fielding’s PhD thesis, but unless you’re very keen, that’s not the easiest way to learn about it.
The best starting point might be Ryan Tomayko’s piece “How I explained REST to my wife“. If you want a little more technical detail after that, you might try this article and, of course, the entry in the ever-wonderful Wikipedia .
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