Finally Got RESTful

REST is a web-site architecture paradigm. One that's used in Rails and that for the longest time seemed to involve some mumbo-jumbo. But it's way simpler than I originally thought, but also easy to confuse.

So what is REST? REST stands for Representational State Transfer.

But basically what this means is that instead of there being a digital asset in a location all there is a representation of that digital asset. Or in other words instead of finding a file in a particular location, all there is is a file-path-location that is interpreted as a command for a digital asset that lies elsewhere. This has two consequences: the file you are seeking does't have to exist, the Rails server can create it ad hoc, and you don't have to go to one page to view an asset and another page to modify it. The server can interpret different commands along with the path as a way of manipulating that asset.

How REST works is kinda besides the point. I already got that, but not why it did what it did. Now that gives you insight into it. The rest is part of the Rails magic and how it translates requests for locations with the web protocols of GET, POST, DELETE and PUT, into commands Rails understands.

[Note: this is an old post from September 2011, that never got published so I'm publishing it now.]

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