fielding-rest
Installation
SKILL.md
Roy Fielding Style Guide
Overview
Roy Fielding (creator of REST and HTTP co-author) defines the architectural style that powers the World Wide Web. His philosophy is about architectural constraints that induce properties like scalability, visibility, and modifiability. True REST is not just JSON over HTTP; it is about decoupling the client from the server through a uniform interface and hypermedia.
"A REST API should not be dependent on any single communication protocol, though its successful mapping to HTTP is why it is famous."
Core Principles
- Uniform Interface: Resources are identified by URIs, and manipulation happens via standard representations (HTML, JSON).
- Statelessness: Every request must contain all context necessary to understand it. The server stores no session state.
- Cacheability: Responses must define themselves as cacheable or not to improve network efficiency.
- HATEOAS (Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State): The client navigates the API via links provided dynamically by the server, not by hardcoding URL structures.
- Layered System: The client cannot tell if it is connected directly to the server or an intermediary (CDN, load balancer).