The point of REST?

[ryanh]

The subject's a little misleading... I see how REST would be helpful in
my environment (in my code too -- sorry, bad joke), but i don't see how
I can really implement it in a useful way.

Given that HTML forms only support GET and POST, how am I supposed to
use other REST/HTTP commands? Building some kind of "middle-tier"
controller that submits curl requests kinda defeats the purpose...

Thanks.

[lawrence k]

Re: The point of REST?


ryanh wrote:[color=blue]
> Given that HTML forms only support GET and POST, how am I supposed to
> use other REST/HTTP commands? Building some kind of "middle-tier"
> controller that submits curl requests kinda defeats the purpose...[/color]

Using fsocketopen you could ping a server with any of REST's other
verbs, but you're still using REST even if you stick with GET and POST.
REST isn't about using a bunch of fancy of verbs, its about avoiding
the cost and complexity of WS*. I think a lot of people now feel that
SOAP and the other web services were deliberately made overly complex
so that programmers would be forced to use vendor tools.

For a reasonably anti- WS* view, read this:

http://fuzzypanic.blogspot.com/2006/05/spitting-up-j2ee-hippo-now-what-about.html