RESTFul路由和REST API

Question

I am currently working on Rails.I have read a lot of documents regarding REST api and RESTFul routes.But i am unable to figure out the relation between these two.My understanding for RESTFul routes is that a http verb is associated with them and i found out nothing else.

Can someone please make these things clear?

1.What are RESTFul routes and their benefits?
2.In what way RESTFul routes are co-related with Rest Api?
3.What are the benefits of REST api over SOAP api?

Answer 1

I don't know Rails, but I can tell you the following:

1)The routes are defined in order to map an incoming request to a controller action. A request is made of an HTTP method (GET/PUT/POST/DELETE), an URL and possibly some content in the body. For example GET books/1234 is a RESTful request for the book identified by the ISBN 1234 . A framework like Rails has to map this request to a controller action. Such an action is an operation whose name is a verb. In the router you have 2 main components for an entry: the request and the mapped action. For example, in get '/books/:isbn', to: 'books#getBookByIsbn' what you say is that a GET request with an URL matching the given structure will be mapped to the action called getBookByIsbn from the controller books .

2)One benefit of RESTful services is that IMHO they are simpler, easier to user than SOAP/WSDL based services.