rest

Microformats in REST Web Services

Introduction

This the home page for discussion, research, and standards regarding how to optimally use Microformats as the encoding for REST web services.

The goal is for all REST-related information in the microformats world to live under this URL.

Participants

• Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
• toydi
• Dimitri Glazkov
• Max Voelkel (xamde)
• David Heinemeier Hansson

Discussion Forums

• uf-rest discussion list on microformats.org
• rest-discuss @ Yahoo Groups

Topics

rest/ahah

Asychronous HTML vs. AJAX

rest/cgi

CGI is slow, and FastCGI is designed for C parsers. Is there a third option?

rest/description

What, if anything, is the analogue of WSDL for REST services?

rest/opacity

Properly Interpreting the "Axiom of URI Opacity"

rest/rails

Ways to make Ruby on Rails more REST-friendly out of the box.

rest/urls

How should URLs be structured for maximum clarity & discoverability?

rest/webforms

Upgrading browsers to support PUT and DELETE properly

Examples

• rest/examples
• rest/forms-examples

Brainstorming

• rest/brainstorming
• rest/forms-brainstorming

Proposals

Note that these are all preliminary.

• [REST-Enabled XHTML] by Dr. Ernie
  • original at rest/rex-proposal
• WebUtopia by Toydi
  • more details in rest-discuss thread: "Dreams about ReSTifying web apps"

Implementations

Tools

• XOXO parser (python)
  • also xoxo-plist.py, a pyobjc variant support Mac OS X plists]
• ahah.js Asynchronous HTML over HTTP
  • was JAH, an AJAX alternative)
• Ruby RESTifarian plugin

 $ script/plugin install restifarian # need beta gems/edge rails for this to work).

• • See also prototype controller

Examples

• DARC: Darwin-Apache-Rails-CoreData
• TurboGear AddressBook (Mac OS X-only)

Sites

• Larry Staton Jr. AHAH-enabled homepage (a first!)