Introduction

Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architecture style that common in web application programming. Developed in tandem with HTTP/1.1, it encourages a representation of application object state within the underlying HTTP protocol transactions and an adherence to the semantics of the underlying HTTP verbs when applied to higher-level application state.

Simplistically, one of the key principles is that one should use the HTTP verbs in a manner that is consistent with the application object state. The table illustrates the different HTTP verbs and their specific applications:

HTTP Verb	Application
GET	Querying or reading the state of an object, given some sort of index
PUT	Setting or directly writing the state of an object based on an index
POST	Creating a new object within an underlying collection; or otherwise calling a procedure that may modify an object
DELETE	Deleting an object based upon an index reference

As well as the NETCONF-over-SSH interface that we've seen in Chapter 1...