REST<\/a> is an architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems, originally defined by Roy-Fielding<\/a> in his 2000 doctoral dissertation. It is built upon the principles of the World-Wide-Web<\/a> and leverages the HTTP<\/a> protocol to facilitate communication between a Client-Server<\/a> architecture.<\/p> A RESTful-API<\/a> is characterized by its adherence to six architectural constraints: Stateless<\/a> interaction, Cacheable<\/a> data, a Layered-System<\/a>, Uniform-Interface<\/a>, Code-On-Demand<\/a>, and the separation of concerns. As noted in the original dissertation<\/a>, these constraints help improve performance, scalability, and simplicity.<\/p> In a REST<\/a> environment, resources are identified by URIs<\/a> and manipulated using standard HTTP-Methods<\/a> such as GET<\/a>, POST<\/a>, PUT<\/a>, and DELETE<\/a>. While JSON<\/a> is the most common data format used today, XML<\/a> is also supported. Documentation from MDN Web Docs<\/a> highlights that REST remains the dominant standard for public Web-Services<\/a>.<\/p>