如何存储REST资源

Question

So I've been reading up on the REST architectural style and I think I grasp the general concept. However, I am having a hard time understanding how the resources are stored (which seems like a very important concept..).

So for example, I understand that I can have a homepage, say index.html, and on that page I can have a link to get a list of items. So the homepage is:

http://localhost/index.html

and then to get the list of items you send a GET request to:

http://localhost/items

if I'm correct this far, then how do you store the list of items at that location? Is it just a text file of all the items in JSON format?

Thank you for any input!

Answer 1

You store them in any way you like. A relational database is not uncommon. A JSON data file is possible (but nowhere near as flexible or safe).

When it is requested, you fetch the data from where ever you stored it and then express the resource in any way you like. JSON or XML are not uncommon.

Answer 2

A web server does not necessarily need to interpret a URI as a folder structure that is available on some disk. There are a lot of frameworks that let you freely define your routes which allows you to execute arbitrary code whenever a route is hit.