Introduction to Web Services

By J. H. Wang
Nov. 28, 2011

Outline
Overview
RESTful Web services

What is a Web Service

a method of communication between two
electronic devices over the Web
From Wikipedia entry on Web service

a software system designed to support

interoperable machine-to-machine
interaction over a network
From W3C definition

 Web service
An interface described in a machine-processable
format (WSDL, or Web Services Description
Language)
Other systems interact with the Web service using
SOAP messages, typically conveyed using
XML/HTTP and other Web-related standards
SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol

Two major classes of Web services

REST-compliant
To manipulate XML representations of Web resources using
a uniform set of stateless operations

Arbitrary

Web Services Architecture

Simple Object Access Protocol

(SOAP)
A protocol for exchanging structured
information in the implementation of Web
Services
XML: for message format
HTTP, SMTP: for message transmission

SOAP Message

POST /InStock HTTP/1.1

Host: www.example.org
Content-Type: application/soap+xml;
charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 299
SOAPAction:
"http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soapenvelope"
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<soap:Envelope
xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/
soap-envelope">
<soap:Header> </soap:Header>
<soap:Body>
<m:GetStockPrice
xmlns:m="http://www.example.org/stock"
>
<m:StockName>IBM</m:StockName>
</m:GetStockPrice>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Web APIs
Moving from SOAP based services to REST
based communications
REST: Representational State Transfer
Do not require XML, SOAP, WSDL

Typically a defined set of HTTP request

messages along with the structure of response
messages expressed in XML or JSON format
JSON: JavaScript Object Notation

They allow the combination of multiple Web

services into new applications known as
mashups

Web Services in a Service-Oriented

Architecture

Three Most Common Styles of Use

RPC (Remote Procedure Calls)
A distributed function call interface

SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture)

The basic unit of communication is a message, rather
than an operation

REST (Representational State Transfer)

Standard operations in HTTP: GET, POST, PUT,
DELETE
Interacting with stateful resources, rather than
messgaes or operations

RPC Web Services

Basic unit: WSDL operation
Widely deployed and supported, but not loosely
coupled
Other approaches: CORBA, DCE/RPC, Java
RMI

SOA Web Services

Basic unit: message
Supported by most major vendors, loose
coupling

Representational State Transfer

(REST)
Interacting with stateful resources, rather
than messages or operations
Using HTTP standard operations such as
GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
WSDL 2.0 offers support for binding to all
HTTP request methods
WSDL 1.1 only GET and POST

Representation of concepts in
WSDL 1.1 and 2.0 documents

Criticisms
Too complex, not open source
A custom interface requires a custom
client for every service
Concerns about performance due to XML
and SOAP/HTTP in enveloping and
transport

RESTful Web Services

Introduced by Roy Fielding in his doctoral
dissertation
He is one of the principal authors of the HTTP
specification version 1.0 and 1.1

Client-server
Clients initiate requests
Servers process requests and return appropriate
responses
Requests and responses are built around the transfer
of representations of resources

Constraints
Client-server
Stateless
No client context is stored on the server between requests
The server can be stateful

Cacheable
Clients can cache responses

Layered system
Clients cannot tell whether its connected directly to the end
server, or an intermediary

Code on demand (optional)

Servers are able to temporarily extend the functionality of a client

Uniform interface

Guiding Principles of the Interface

Identification of resources
E.g. URIs

Manipulation of resources through these

representations
Self-descriptive messages
Hypermedia as the engine of application
state
E.g. hyperlinks, hypertext

Key Goals

Scalability of component interactions

Generality of interfaces
Independent deployment of components
Intermediary components to reduce
latency, enforce security, and encapsulate
legacy systems

RESTful Web API

Four aspects
Base URI for the Web service
Internet media type of the data supported by
the Web service
E.g. JSON, XML, or YAML

The set of operations supported by the Web

service using HTTP methods
E.g. GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE

The API must be hypertext driven

 No official standard for RESTful services

But Web standard protocols are often used

RESTful Web services: Basics

Use HTTP methods explicitly

Be stateless
Expose directory structure-like URIs
Transfer XML, JSON, or both

Using HTTP Methods Explicitly

One-to-one mapping

GET: to retrieve a resource on the server

POST: to create a resource
PUT: to change the state of a resource or to update it
DELETE: to remove a resource

For example,
Before
GET /adduser?name=Robert HTTP/1.1

After
POST /users HTTP/1.1
Host: myserver
Content-Type: application/xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<user>
<name>Robert</name>
</user>

 Another example
Before
GET /updateuser?name=Robert&newname=Bob HTTP/1.1

After
PUT /users/Robert HTTP/1.1
Host: myserver
Content-Type: application/xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<user>
<name>Bob</name>
</user>

Be Stateless
For scalability, clients are required to send
complete, independent requests
include all data needed to be fulfilled so that
the components in the intermediary servers
may forward, route, and load-balance without
any state being held locally in between
requests

Expose directory structure-like

URIs
Ex.
http://www.myservice.org/discussion/topics/{topic}
http://www.myservice.org/discussion/2008/12/10/{topic}

Guidelines
Hide the server-side scripting technology file extensions (.jsp,
.php, .asp), if any, so you can port to something else without
changing the URIs
Keep everything lowercase
Substitute spaces with hyphens or underscores (one or the other)
Avoid query strings as much as you can
Instead of using the 404 Not Found code if the request URI is for
a partial path, always provide a default page or resource as a
response.

Transfer XML, JSON, or both

Ex.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<discussion date="{date}" topic="{topic}">
<comment>{comment}</comment>
<replies>
<reply from="joe@mail.com" href="/discussion/topics/
{topic}/joe"/>
<reply from="bob@mail.com"
href="/discussion/topics/{topic}/bob"/>
</replies>
</discussion>

Common MIME types

JSON: application/json
XML: application/xml
XHTML: application/xhtml+xml

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
RESTful Web services: the basics, by Alex
Rodriguez, IBM developerWorks, available
at:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webserv
ices/library/ws-restful/
.

Thanks for Your Attention!