RESTful Web APIs

RESTful APIs make programming easy for users, but it can be tricky to map traditional APIs to REST expectations. While REST simplifies user expectations, getting the flow and granularity of data right remains a challenge. REST's popularity has led to tremendous growth in "almost REST" APIs, and grown demand for projects that evolve toward the hypermedia possibilities REST opens for data on the Web.

This book shows readers how to get APIs as close as possible to optimum usability, focusing on solutions to common problems that cross a variety of domains. By combining the tools and expectations that the Web has already provided with complex data structures, developers will be able to create secure and powerful applications their customers will be happy to use.

Leonard Richardson (http://www.crummy.com/) is the author of the Ruby Cookbook (O'Reilly) and of several open source libraries, including Beautiful Soup. A California native, he currently lives in New York.

An internationally known author and lecturer, Mike Amundsen travels throughout the United States and Europe consulting and speaking on a wide range of topics including distributed network architecture, Web application development, Cloud computing, and other subjects. His recent work focuses on the role hypermedia plays in creating and maintaining applications that can successfully evolve over time. He has more than a dozen books to his credit and recently contributed to the book "RESTful Web Services Cookbook" (by Subbu Allamaraju). When he is not working, Mike enjoys spending time with his family in Kentucky, USA.

Sam Ruby is a prominent software developer who is a co-chair of the W3C HTML Working Group and has made significant contributions to many of the Apache Software Foundation's open source software projects. He is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the Emerging Technologies Group of IBM.