From: vruz <horacio.lopez@...>
Date: 2004-08-27T04:21:58+09:00
Subject: Re: RESTless Ruby?

> I found this page to be helpful in explaining this with an example:
>   http://www.xfront.com/REST-Web-Services.html

That puts into words many techniques we've been using intuitively for years now.
(even before the "web services" term was coined)

Apart from that, I've also found it interesting to provide some 
metadata about the service itself,  this resembles more to command
line help than WSDL, being it lightweight, it can be used for both human 
and computer consumption when called without parameters.

Say for example
/////////////
request: GET  http://restserver/temperature?format=xml
response:  
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<service name="temperature">
        <input>
               <parameter name="system" type="string" optional="yes"
default="fahrenheit">
               <parameter name="convert_to" type="string"
optional="yes" default="celcius">
               <parameter name="degrees" type="float" optional="no">
        </input>
        <output>
                <parameter type="float" name="result">
        </output>                  
</service>
/////////////
request:  GET http://restserver/temperature?format=ascii
usage: /temperature [system="fahrenheit"] [convert_to="celcius"] degrees=Float
returns: Float result
//////////////

I sometimes provide something like:
request:  GET  http://restserver/services
response:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
       <service_list>
          <service name="temperature" />
          <service name="random" />
          <service name="customer_record" />
       </service_list>

/////////////

This can be useful to automate your services tests

hope this helps,


--- vruz