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Roy fielding came with this idea and a lot of application is built around this. But I am really really confused why it is called Representational state transfer. Don't we go from one page to other page in almost every application and the application changes its state as we move from one page to other page?

After reading a few article I know it 1. is built on HTTP, 2. Allows caching. 3. Resources can be accessed using URI.

What are the advantages of REST over regular ASP.Net web form application? Why and where would I need RESTful application. Please help.

BTW I have been programming ASP.Net web forms for long time and really don't know about new technologies.

Thanks in advance.

Roninn
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  • I don't see a question in there anywhere? – eatonphil Jun 20 '13 at 18:58
  • What are the advantages of REST over regular ASP.Net web form application? Why and where would I need RESTful application. – Roninn Jun 20 '13 at 19:06
  • You might want to read first few chapters of Pro ASP.NET Web API Security: Securing ASP.NET Web API. http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-Web-API-Security/dp/1430257822/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371754679&sr=8-1&keywords=webapi+security – Win Jun 20 '13 at 19:10
  • If your regular ASP.Net application avoids using session state then chances are your ASP.Net Web forms application is probably far more "RESTFul" than most Web APIs that claim to be... – Darrel Miller Jun 21 '13 at 01:32

2 Answers2

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REST is not an alternative to web pages. It's a means of accessing resources via HTTP from any kind of client application, not just a web browser. That's why RESTful services are called REST APIs as well.

Simply said: REST has nothing to do with web pages. They just happen to use the same protocol (HTTP)

Dennis Traub
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Here is the trend I see:

1996 - Classic ASP

2002 - ASP.NET

2009 - ASP.NET MVC

2012 - ASP.NET Web Api and Single-page applications

Perhaps by "RESTful application" you mean a single-page application:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application

This is where the trend is going I believe - instead of creating both UI and business logic on the server side, you can build rich client-side UIs which communicate with the server via REST protocol (thus having only business logic and RESTful endpoint on the server side), allowing you to provide a better use experience to your users. Also you can build multiple UIs for different platforms (Web UI, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows 8 app etc.) which all are consuming the same REST API service.

Konstantin Tarkus
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