REST API

REST API is an architectural style for building web services using standard HTTP methods and stateless communication. REST stands for Representational State Transfer, and APIs following this pattern use predictable URLs to represent resources, with HTTP verbs like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to perform operations on them. Data is typically exchanged in JSON format.

The stateless nature means each request contains all the information the server needs to process it, with no session stored between calls. This makes REST APIs inherently scalable because any server in a cluster can handle any request. Caching is built into the HTTP protocol, so responses can be cached at multiple layers to reduce server load and improve response times. These characteristics explain why REST remains the dominant pattern for web service development, powering the vast majority of public APIs and internal service communication in web applications.