Take the 2-minute tour ×
Salesforce Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Salesforce administrators, implementation experts, developers and anybody in-between. It's 100% free, no registration required.

I am new to Salesforce. I want to learn about the rest api. What are its uses? Thanks in advance!

share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

Everything related to REST API can be found at this page below

http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/REST_API

1)Supports both XML and JSON format

2)Preferred for mobile and web apps since JSON being Lighter the app runs smoother and faster

3)Since both REST and OAuth rely strongly on HTTP/S standards - it makes it very easy to find existing libraries to communicate with the API's for nearly any language

share|improve this answer

Since REST uses standard HTTP it is much simpler in just about every way. Creating clients, developing APIs, the documentation is much easier to understand and there aren’t very many things that REST doesn’t do easier/better than SOAP.

REST permits many different data formats whereas SOAP only permits XML. While this may seem like it adds complexity to REST because you need to handle multiple formats, in my experience it has actually been quite beneficial.

JSON usually is a better fit for data and parses much faster. REST allows better support for browser clients due to its support for JSON.

REST has better performance and scalability. REST reads can be cached, SOAP based reads cannot be cached.

It’s a bad argument (by authority), but it’s worth mentioning that Yahoo uses REST for all their services including Flickr and del.ici.ous. Amazon and EBay provide both though Amazon’s internal usage is nearly all REST source.

Google used to provide only SOAP for all their services, but in 2006 they deprecated in favour of REST source.

It’s interesting how there has been an internal battle between rest vs soap at amazon. For the most part REST dominates their architecture for web services.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.
{"cc_re__cc_re__cc_by_sa_3_0": ["                  <li><a href=\"//area51.stackexchange.com\" title=\"proposing new sites in the Stack Exchange network\">Area 51</a></li>\r\n                        <li><a href=\"//careers.stackoverflow.com\">Stack Overflow Careers</a></li>\r\n                    \r\n                </ol>\r\n            </td>\r\n    </tr>\r\n</table>\r\n                </div>\r\n            </div>\r\n\r\n            <div id=\"copyright\">\r\n                site design / logo &#169; 2015 stack exchange inc; user contributions licensed under <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/\" rel=\"license\">cc by-sa 3.0</a> \r\n                with <a href=\"http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/\" rel=\"license\">attribution required</a>\r\n            </div>\r\n            <div id=\"svnrev\">\r\n                rev 2015.4.24.2525\r\n            </div>\r\n                <div id=\"additional-notices\">\r\n                    Salesforce is a registered trademark of salesforce.com, Inc.\r\n                </div>\r\n            \r\n        </div>\r\n    </div>\r\n    <noscript>\r\n        <div id=\"noscript-warnin"], "copyright__copyright__copyright": ["\u00a0source.\n\nGoogle used to provide only SOAP for all their services, but in 2006 they deprecated in favour of REST\u00a0source.\n\nIt\u2019s interesting how there has been an internal battle between rest vs soap at amazon. For the most part REST dominates their architecture for web services.\n\nshare|improve this answer\n\nYour Answer\n\n\u00a0\ndiscard\n\nBy posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.\n\nNot the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question."]}