Where can I find a good documentation about the core concept of REST?

Question

I found a good description on wikipedia with a few reference links, but there may be better ones, please help me to find these!

To be clear, I am not looking for implementation for any language specific implementation guides, just the pure concept.

Answer 1

I read RESTful web services by O'Reilly and really enjoyed it.

Answer 2

Guidelines for Building RESTful Web Services has all the info on the resources you need.

This is another useful blog entry:

The uniform interface constraints describe how a service built for the Web can be a good participant in the Web architecture. These constraints are described briefly as follows :

1) Identification of resources: A resource is any information item that can be named and represented (e.g. a document, a stock price at a given point in time, the current weather in Las Vegas, etc). Resources in your service should be identified using URIs.

2) Manipulation of resources via representations: A representation is the physical representation of a resource and should correspond to a valid media type. Using standard media types as the data formats behind your service increases the reach of your service by making it accessible to a wide range of potential clients. Interaction with the resource should be based on retrieval and manipulation of the representation of the resource identified by its URI.

3)Self-descriptive messages: Following the principles of statelessness in your service's interactions, using standard media types and correctly indicating the cacheability of messages via HTTP method usage and control headers ensures that messages are self descriptive. Self descriptive messages make it possible for messages to be processed by intermediaries between the client and server without impacting either.

4)Hypermedia as the engine of application state: Application state should be expressed using URIs and hyperlinks to transition between states. This is probably the most controversial and least understood of the architectural constraints set forth in Roy Fielding's dissertation. In fact, Fielding's dissertation contains an explicit arguments against using HTTP cookies for representing application state to hammer this point home yet it is often ignored.

Answer 3

I'm not sure how much detail you're looking for, but for a broad overview of what REST is all about I recommend Ryan Tomayko's How I Explained REST to My Wife.

Answer 4

Or you can get it straight from the horse's mouth, Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures