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I have a requirement to create RESTful web service.

I have narrowed down on 'Restlet' for the web service implementation.

Can someone tell me the clear pro's and con's of using Restlet and if there are any better alternatives.

thanks in advance

Ashish Sharma
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5 Answers5

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Restlet has an extensive list of extensions for Spring, WADL, XML, JSON as well and many more, including an extension for JAX-RS API.

It is also the sole framework available in six consistent editions:

  • Java SE
  • Java EE
  • Google Web Toolkit
  • Google AppEngine
  • Android
  • OSGi Environments

Its main benefits are:

  • fully symmetric client and server API when JAX-RS was designed for server-side processing
  • connectors for other protocols than HTTP (mapping to HTTP semantics) when JAX-RS is HTTP only
  • much broader feature scope including full URI routing control via the Restlet API (but can integrate with Servlet if needed)
  • full provision for NIO support

The JAX-RS API can be a good choice if you are restricted to JCP approved APIs (then don't use Spring or any extension of the JAX-RS projects like Jersey and RESTeasy!), but otherwise Restlet is the most mature framework (initially released in 2005) and will give you, in its 2.0 version, all the benefits of annotations combined with a powerful and extensible class-oriented framework.

For a longer list of features, please check this page.

Best regards, Jerome Louvel

Restlet ~ Founder and Lead developer ~ http://www.restlet.org

Jerome Louvel
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  • Thanks for suggestion Jerome, started using Restlet – Ashish Sharma Oct 10 '09 at 09:03
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    I can not understate the convenience of Restlet's XML-free configuration. I have a lot of legacy systems to work with, and their massive configuration are a large source of frustration. With Restlet, I can literally hook into any data source and expose a restful service in minutes/hours instead of hours/days. Being easy for junior developers to pick up is a giant plus. – corsiKa Dec 06 '12 at 17:16
  • Thanks CorsiKa for the feed-back! – Jerome Louvel Dec 10 '12 at 08:34
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For a comparison of JAX-RS frameworks see JAX-RS Frameworks

Community
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Jersey API can be used to implement RESTful Web services. http://jersey.java.net/

Other than RESTful Web services, Jersey also provide many other features.

Nodexpert
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Some more useful links regarding available REST frameworks and their comparisons:

  1. A Comparison of JAX-RS Implementations

  2. rest-introduction

  3. tilkov-rest-doubts

  4. Rest anti-patterns

  5. JAX-RS Vendor Comparisons - Part I

Ashish Sharma
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Apache Cocoon is a very good solution to implementing a RESTfull Web Services.