rest

Microformats in REST Web Services

This the page for discussion, research, and standards regarding how to optimally use Microformats as the encoding for Representational State Transfer (REST) web services. REST is a software architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems like the world wide web. The goal is for all REST-related information in the microformats world to live under this URL.

Discussion Forums

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

Topics

URLs

rest/opacity

Properly Interpreting the "Axiom of URI Opacity"

rest/urls

How should URLs be structured for maximum clarity & discoverability?

rest/property

How to emulate WebDAV-style properties (metadata) over standard HTTP

HTML

rest/ahah

Asychronous HTML vs. AJAX

rest/datatypes

How to encode type information in HTML

rest/description

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

rest/webforms

Upgrading browsers to support PUT and DELETE properly

Implementations

rest/rails

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

Standards

• HTTP as a Substrate - Best Current Practice
• text/uri-list (Section 5, URI Resolution Services)

Background Research

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

Atom-based alternatives

• Atom Publishing Protocol
• Google's GData

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
• Meditation a PHP REST API Framework.

Examples

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

Sites

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

Participants

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