A collaborative list of great resources about RESTful API architecture, development, test, and performance. Feel free to contribute to this on-going list.
- Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures - Roy Fielding's dissertation defining REST
- HTTP API design guide extracted from work on the Heroku Platform API
- Best Practices for Designing a Pragmatic RESTful API
- How to design a REST API? - Full guide tackling security, pagination, filtering, versioning, partial answers, CORS, etc.
- Enterprise Integration Using REST by the famous Martin Fowler
- HATEOAS - Clear explanation on what HATEOAS is, and why you should use it.
- How to GET a cup of coffee
- JSON API - Standard for building APIs in JSON.
- RAML - Simple and succinct way to describe RESTful API.
- JSend - Simple specification that lays down some rules for how JSON responses from web servers should be formatted.
- OData - Open protocol to allow the creation and consumption of queryable and interoperable RESTful APIs. Quite complex.
- HAL - Simple format that gives a consistent and easy way to hyperlink between resources in your API (see: HATEOAS).
- JSON-LD - Standard for describing Linked Data and hypermedia relations in JSON (W3C).
- Hydra - Vocabulary for Hypermedia-Driven Web APIs (W3C).
- Schema.org - Collection of schemas describing common data models.
- Guzzle - HTTP client and framework for consuming RESTful web services.
- Buzz - Another lightweight HTTP client.
- unirest for PHP - Simplified, lightweight HTTP client library.
- restangular - AngularJS service to handle REST API properly and easily.
- restful.js - JS client for interacting with server-side RESTful resources.
- traverson - A Hypermedia API/HATEOAS Client for Node.js and the Browser
- restler - REST client library for node.js.
- unirest for Node.js - Simplified, lightweight HTTP client library.
- RESTClient - Simple HTTP and REST client for Ruby, inspired by microframework syntax for specifying actions.
- Spyke - Interact with REST services in an ActiveRecord-like manner.
- excon - Usable, fast, simple Ruby HTTP 1.1. It works great as a general HTTP(s) client and is particularly well suited to usage in API clients.
- gopencils - Small and simple package to easily consume REST APIs.
- postgrest - Serve a fully RESTful API directly from an existing PostgreSQL database.
- MySQL HTTP plugin - Simple REST-like / CRUD server for any MySQL database.
- node-restify - Framework specifically meant for REST API.
- Sails.js - Node.js Web framework embedding a command to generate automatically a REST API.
- mers - Express service exposing Mongoose finders as RESTful API.
- Baucis - Build scalable REST API based on your Mongoose entities.
- flatiron/resourceful - Isomorphic Resource engine for JavaScript.
- loopback - Powerful Node.js framework for creating APIs and easily connecting to backend data sources.
- Microrest - Micro-web application providing a REST API on top of any relational database.
- Negotiation - Content negotiation library.
- Drest - Library for exposing Doctrine entities as REST resource endpoints.
- Restler - Lightweight framework to expose PHP methods as RESTful web API.
- HAL - Hypertext Application Language (HAL) builder library.
- Apigility - API builder built with Zend Framework 2.
- phprest - Specialized REST microframework for PHP.
- Hateoas - PHP library to support implementing representations for HATEOAS REST web services.
- PHP Schema - Generator of PHP data model using schemas from Schema.org.
- REST APIs with Symfony2: the Right Way - Complete guide to build a state-of-the-art REST API with Symfony2 framework.
- FOSRestBundle - Bundle handling view, routing, error handling, etc. for your REST API.
- stanlemon/rest-bundle - Build a REST API based on Doctrine entities using conventions over configuration.
- lakion/Lionframe - Glu between several community libraries to ease API development.
- BazingaHateoasBundle - Integrate the Hateoas library into a Symfony2 application.
- Symfony REST Edition - Start with a Symfony2 application with all REST-friendly bundles pre-configured.
- NgAdminGeneratorBundle - Boostrap ng-admin configuration based on
stanlemon/rest-bundle
. - DunglasApiBundle - Build a REST API which follow Hydra/JSON-LD specification.
- API Platform - Specialize Symfony edition for the creation of hypermedia REST APIs.
- Django REST framework - Powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.
- django-tastypie - Creating delicious APIs for Django apps.
- flask-restful - Extension for Flask that adds support for quickly building REST APIs.
- flask-restless - Flask extension for generating ReSTful APIs for database models defined with SQLAlchemy (or Flask-SQLAlchemy).
- sandman - Automated REST APIs for existing database-driven systems.
- restless - Framework agnostic REST framework based on lessons learned from TastyPie.
- savory-pie - REST API building library (django, and others).
- Grape - Opinionated micro-framework for creating REST-like APIs in Ruby.
- gocrud: Go library to simplify creating, updating and deleting arbitrary depth structured data — to make building REST services fast and easy.
- go-json-rest - Thin layer on top of
net/http
that helps building RESTful APIs easily. - sleepy - RESTful micro-framework written in Go.
- restit - Go micro framework to help writing RESTful API integration test.
- go-relax - Framework of pluggable components to build RESTful API's.
- go-rest - Small and evil REST framework for Go.
- go-restful - A declarative highly readable framework for building restful API's.
- Goat - Minimalistic REST API server in Go.
- Resoursea - REST framework for quickly writing resource based services.
- Zerver - Zerver is a expressive, modular, feature completed RESTful framework.
- RestExpress - Netty-based, highly performant, lightweight, container-less, plugin-extensible, framework that is ideal for microservice architectures.
- httpie - Command line HTTP client, far more dev-friendly than
curl
. - Postman REST Client - Chrome extension essential to test manually REST API.
- resty - Little command line REST client that you can use in pipelines (bash or zsh).
- jq - Command line JSON processor, to use in combination with a command-line HTTP client like cURL.
- HttpMaster - GUI tool for testing REST APIs and services. Windows OS only.
- FakeRest - Patch XMLHttpRequest to fake a REST API client-side.
- json-server - Serve a REST API from fixture files using quick prototyping.
- Mocky.io - Free online service to create fake HTTP responses.
- Swagger API Mock - Mock RESTful API based on swagger schema
- ProgrammableWeb - The world's largest API repository.
- Public APIS - Explore The Largest API Directory In The Galaxy.
- Marvel Comics API - Query characters, stories, events about Marvel superheroes.
- JSON Placeholder - Free online REST service that you can use whenever you need some fake data.
- Swagger - Documentation/querying web interface for REST APIs.
- API doc - Inline Documentation for RESTful web APIs.
- Runscope - Automated API Monitoring & Testing.
- import.io Magic - Create a REST API from any website in one click.
- Apiary - Collaborative design, instant API mock, generated documentation, integrated code samples, debugging and automated testing.
- ng-admin - Add an AngularJS admin GUI to any RESTful API.
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