REST based API

International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, Volume 1(4), ISSN: 2456-6470 www.ijtsrd.com
571
IJTSRD | May-Jun 2017
Available Online @www.ijtsrd.com
REST based API
Shabnam Kumari
A.P, Department of CSE,
Sat Kabir Institute of Technology & Management,
Bahadurgarh, Haryana, India
Deepak
M.Tech Scholar, Department of CSE, Sat Kabir
Institute of Technology & Management,
Bahadurgarh, Haryana, India
ABSTRACT
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and
Representational State Transfer (REST) are two
answers to the same question: how to access Web
services. The choice initially may seem easy, but at
times it can be surprisingly difficult. SOAP is a
standards-based Web services access protocol that has
been around for a while and enjoys all of the benefits
of long-term use. Originally developed by Microsoft,
SOAP really isn’t as simple as the acronym would
suggest. The Difference between SOAP vs REST
APIs REST is the newcomer to the block. It seeks to
fix the problems with SOAP and provide a truly
simple method of accessing Web services.
Keywords: SOAP, REST, API
1. INTRODUCTION
RESTful Web Services are basically REST
Architecture based Web Services. In REST
Architecture everything is a resource. RESTful web
services are light weight, highly scalable and
maintainable and are very commonly used to create
APIs for web-based applications.
REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer.
REST is a web standards based architecture and uses
HTTP Protocol for data communication. It revolves
around resources where every component is a
resource and a resource is accessed by a common
interface using HTTP standard methods. REST was
first introduced by Roy Fielding in year 2000.
In REST architecture, a REST Server simply provides
access to resources and the REST client accesses and
presents the resources. Here each resource is
identified by URIs/ Global IDs. REST uses various
representations to represent a resource like Text,
JSON and XML. JSON is now the most popular
format being used in Web Services.
1.1 HTTP Methods
The following HTTP methods are most commonly
used in a REST based architecture.
 GET − Provides a read only access to a
resource.
 PUT − Used to create a new resource.
 DELETE − Used to remove a resource.
 POST − Used to update an existing resource
or create a new resource.
 OPTIONS − Used to get the supported
operations on a resource.
A web service is a collection of open protocols and
standards used for exchanging data between
applications or systems. Software applications written
in various programming languages and running on
various platforms can use web services to exchange
data over computer networks like the Internet in a
manner similar to inter-process communication on a
single computer. This interoperability (e.g., between
Java and Python, or Windows and Linux applications)
is due to the use of open standards.
Web services based on REST Architecture are known
as RESTful Web Services. These web services use
HTTP methods to implement the concept of REST
architecture. A RESTful web service usually defines a
URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), which is a service
that provides resource representation such as JSON
and a set of HTTP Methods.
2. Web Service API examples:
Because REST API’s use HTTP, they can be used by
practically any programming language and easy to
test (it’s a requirement of a REST API that the client
and server are independent of each other allowing
either to be coded in any language and improved upon
supporting longevity and evolution).

International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, Volume 1(
The World Wide Web (WWW) is an example of a
distributed system that uses REST protocol
architecture to provide a hypermedia driven interface
for websites. I’m saying hypermedia (instead of
hypertext) as an expansion term to avoid confusion
about the REST API supporting other formats to be
provided not just HTML.
2.1. Real World Examples:
 Twitter API :
Twitter provides a REST API which you can
query to get the latest tweets, you can provide a
search query (or hash tag) and it will return the
results in JSON format. Example of this HTTP
request to the Twitter API to get the latest 3 tweets
matching “jQuery”.
Figure 2.1. Twitter API URL
And to expand on what a REST API should provide:
The REST API should specify what it can provide and
how to use it, details such as query parameters,
response format, request limitations, public use/API
keys, method (GET/POST/PUT/DELETE), language
support, callback usage, HTTPS support and resource
representations should be self-descriptive.
This is the information provided for the
search/tweets REST API.
International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, Volume 1(4), ISSN: 2456
The World Wide Web (WWW) is an example of a
distributed system that uses REST protocol
itecture to provide a hypermedia driven interface
for websites. I’m saying hypermedia (instead of
hypertext) as an expansion term to avoid confusion
about the REST API supporting other formats to be
Twitter provides a REST API which you can
query to get the latest tweets, you can provide a
search query (or hash tag) and it will return the
results in JSON format. Example of this HTTP
request to the Twitter API to get the latest 3 tweets
Twitter API URL
And to expand on what a REST API should provide:
The REST API should specify what it can provide and
how to use it, details such as query parameters,
response format, request limitations, public use/API
method (GET/POST/PUT/DELETE), language
support, callback usage, HTTPS support and resource
descriptive.
This is the information provided for the GET
Figure 2.2. Twitter API Resource Information
2.2. API Providers :
Following are the other major API providers:
 The Twitter REST API
 Facebook REST API
 Google Translate REST API
 Flickr REST API
 Dropbox REST API
 Ebay Developer REST API (product centres)
 BING Maps REST API (services)
 BING Traffic Incidents API
 Magento REST API
3. Login API Integration Code:
In our project, we are integrating APIs from social
networking sites to allow users to register and login to
our website and we will also fetch the content from
those social networking sites.
Below is the main code for providing OAuth to pass
to the API calls for social sites like Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, and Google Plus.
2456-6470 www.ijtsrd.com
572
Twitter API Resource Information
Following are the other major API providers:
The Twitter REST API
Google Translate REST API
Ebay Developer REST API (product centres)
BING Maps REST API (services)
ffic Incidents API
Login API Integration Code:
In our project, we are integrating APIs from social
allow users to register and login to
our website and we will also fetch the content from
Below is the main code for providing OAuth to pass
to the API calls for social sites like Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, and Google Plus.

573
class Hybrid_Auth
{
public static $version = "2.4.1-wsl-fork";
public static $config = array();
public static $store = NULL;
public static $error = NULL;
// ----------------------------------------------------
/**
* Try to start a new session of none then
initialize Hybrid_Auth
*
* Hybrid_Auth constructor will require either
a valid config array or
* a path for a configuration file as parameter.
*/
function __construct( $config )
{
Hybrid_Auth::initialize( $config );
}
// ------------------------------------------------------
/**
* Try to initialize Hybrid_Auth with given
$config hash or file
*/
public static function initialize( $config )
{
if( ! is_array( $config ) && !
file_exists( $config ) ){
throw new Exception(
"Hybriauth config does not exist on the given path.",
1 );
}
4. Results:
4.1. API Integration Output:
Below are some screenshots of the project code when
implemented with a valid API keys required for the
target websites.
Figure 4.1 Output Connect with social sites
Figure 4.2. Output login with social sites

574
Figure 4.3. Output Instagram token settings
Figure 4.4. Output Instagram Images
Figure 4.5. Output Instagram Images layout 1
Figure 4.6. Output Instagram image settings
Figure 4.7. Output Instagram Images layout 2
5. Conclusion:
Continuing our discussion of using the web services
layer as a pure packaging strategy of a business
module, we evolved the architecture further to discuss
message interfaces. We've explored XML, SOAP,
REST and WSDL web services and identified issues
with WSDL as the interface definition. Using the
XSD to define the message interfaces provides
separation of responsibility between the business
module and the web services infrastructure layers.
Further, it allows the enterprise to have its business

575
module interfaces defined and managed by its
business groups, where such responsibility belongs.
The engineering group is responsible for the
implementation of the business functionality and can
focus on its task with clear business functionality
definitions already provided. Web services and XML
technologies are evolving enterprise processes to truly
define ownerships and responsibility within groups—
without any constraints of technology, platform, or
products used within the enterprise.
Web services are one of the key elements of the so-
called programmable Web. They are extremely
versatile software elements that really have the
potential to open up a new era in software: the age of
interoperability. Web services can be effectively used
to participate in and set up business-to-business (B2B)
transactions. They are great at exposing software
functionality to customers and integrating
heterogeneous platforms.
References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_stat
e_transfer
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service [4]
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ 19884295/soa p-
vs-rest-differences
[5]
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4163066/restvs-
soap-has-rest-a-better-performance
[6] http://blog.smartbear.com/apis/understandingsoap-
and-rest-basics/
[7] REST vs. SOAP: Making the Right Architectural
Decision by CesarePautasso from Faculty of
Informatics University of Lugano(USI), Switzerland;
[8] Sharing Service Semantics using SOAP-Based and
REST Web Services by Xuan Shi
[9] SOAP and Web Services by Panagiotis Louridas
[10] SOAP-Based vs. RESTful Web Services by
Fatna Belqasmi, Jagdeep Singh, Suhib Younis Bani
Melhem, and Roch H. Glitho from Concordia
University
[11] T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, and H. Frystyk. RFC
1945: Hypertext Transfer Protocol — HTTP/1.0, May
1996.
[12] J. Correia and M. Cantara. Gartner sheds light on
developer opps in web services. Integration
Developers News, June 2003.
[13] Dare Obsanjo Blog. Misunderstanding REST: A
look at the Bloglines, del.icio.us and Flickr APIs, May
2011.
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.asp
x?guid=7a2f3df2-83f7-471bbbe6-2d8462060263.
[14] B. M. Duska, D. Marwood, and M. J. Freeley.
The measured access characteristics of World-
WideWeb client proxy caches. In USENIX
Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems,
USITS, 1997.

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