Implementing RESTful web service

Question

Hello,

I have a requirement to create RESTful web service.

I have narrowed down on 'Restlet' for the web service implementation.

Can someone tell me the clear pro's and con's of using Restlet and if there are any better alternatives.

thanks in advance

Answer 1

For a comparison of JAX-RS frameworks see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/80799/jax-rs-frameworks

Answer 2

Apache Cocoon is a very good solution to implementing a RESTfull Web Services.

Answer 3

Restlet has an extensive list of extensions for Spring, WADL, XML, JSON as well and many more, including an extension for JAX-RS API.

It is also the sole framework available in four consistent editions:

• Java SE
• Java EE
• Google Web Toolkit
• Google AppEngine
• Android

Its main benefits are:

• fully symmetric client and server API when JAX-RS was designed for server-side processing
• connectors for other protocols than HTTP (mapping to HTTP semantics) when JAX-RS is HTTP only
• much broader feature scope including full URI routing control via the Restlet API (but can integrate with Servlet if needed)
• full provision for NIO support

The JAX-RS API can be a good choice if you are restricted to JCP approved APIs (then don't use Spring or any extension of the JAX-RS projects like Jersey and RESTeasy!), but otherwise Restlet is the most mature framework (initially released in 2005) and will give you, in its 2.0 version, all the benefits of annotations combined with a powerful and extensible class-oriented framework.

For a longer list of features, please check this page.

Best regards, Jerome Louvel

Restlet ~ Founder and Lead developer ~ http://www.restlet.org

Answer 4

Some more useful links regarding available REST frameworks and their comparisons:

1. A Comparison of JAX-RS Implementations

2. rest-introduction

3. tilkov-rest-doubts

4. Rest anti-patterns

5. JAX-RS Vendor Comparisons - Part I

Answer 5

Jersey API can be used to implement RESTful Web services. https://jersey.dev.java.net/

Other than RESTful Web services, Jersey also provide many other features.