6. Real REST Examples

Here's a very partial list of service providers that use a REST API. Note that some of them also support a WSDL (Web Services) API, in addition, so you can pick which to use; but in most cases, when both alternatives are available, REST calls are easier to create, the results are easier to parse and use, and it's also less resource-heavy on your system.

So without further ado, some REST services:

• The famous Twitter API is all REST.
• Yahoo! offer most of their services using REST. This includes
  • Search API,
  • Maps,
  • Photos,
  • Traffic,
  • ... and just about any other.
• Flickr,
• Amazon.com offer several REST services, e.g., for their S3 storage solution (see Chapter 6),
• Atom is a RESTful alternative to RSS.

(This is far from an exhaustive list.)

Here's a simple example: the following URL sends a REST request to Yahoo!'s web-search service: http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/V1/webSearch?appid=YahooDemo&query=rest. Click it, and observe the XML results, ready to be used directly, not wrapped in an SOAP "envelope" or other noise.

• This REST request includes two parameters: "appid", used by Yahoo! to specify your application, and "query", which is the actual search query.
• If you plan to make actual use of Yahoo!'s web-search service, make sure you create your own appid. See the documentation for details.