javascript REST client

Question

is there a javascript library with REST or RESL-like (GET, POST, PUT and DELETE over http or https) capabilities?

Answer 1

Dojo does, e.g. via JsonRestStore, see http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/06/13/restful-json-dojo-data/ .

Answer 2

You don't really need a specific client, it's fairly simple with most libraries. For example in jQuery you can just call the generic $.ajax function with the type of request you want to make:

$.ajax({
 url: 'http://example.com/',
 type: 'PUT',
 data: 'ID=1&Name=John&Age=10, // or $('#myform').serializeArray()
 success: function() { alert('PUT completed'); }
});

You can replace PUT with GET/POST/DELETE or whatever.

Answer 3

While you may wish to use a library, such as the excellent jQuery, you don't have to: all modern browsers support HTTP very well in their JavaScript implementations via the XMLHttpRequest API, which, despite its name, is not limited to XML representations.

Here's an example of making a synchronous HTTP PUT request in JavaScript:

var url = "http://host/path/to/resource";
var representationOfDesiredState = "The cheese is old and moldy, where is the bathroom?";

var client = new XMLHttpRequest();

client.open("PUT", url, false);

client.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/plain");

client.send(representationOfDesiredState);

if (client.status == 200)
    alert("The request succeeded!\n\nThe response representation was:\n\n" + client.responseText)
else
    alert("The request did not succeed!\n\nThe response status was: " + client.status + " " + client.statusText + ".");

This example is synchronous because that makes it a little easier, but it's quite easy to make asynchronous requests using this API as well.

There are thousands of pages and articles on the web about learning XmlHttpRequest — they usually use the term AJAX – unfortunately I can't recommend a specific one. You may find this reference handy though.

Answer 4

jQuery has JSON-REST plugin with REST style of URI parameter templates. According to its description example of using is the followin: $.Read("/{b}/{a}", { a:'foo', b:'bar', c:3 }) becomes a GET to "/bar/foo?c=3".