Page Comparison

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In contrast to a protocol such as SOAP, which treats HTTP as a mere transport protocol for SOAP messages, the REST architecture exploits HTTP directly. The core insight is that the HTTP protocol itself, augmented by a few simple conventions, is eminently suitable to serve as the framework for distributed applications.

REST

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Invocation

Because the REST architecture is built around standard HTTP, in many cases you can use a regular browser as a REST client. For example, to invoke a simple Hello World REST service running on the host and port, localhost:9091, you could navigate to a URL like the following in your browser:

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from("rest:get:say:/hello/{name}").transform().simple("Hello ${header.name}");

Restlet Component

This component (in camel-restlet) is a REST implementation that can be layered above different transport protocols (although it is only tested against the HTTP protocol). This component also provides an integration with the Restlet Framework (a commercial framework for developing REST services in Java).

For example, the following code shows how to define a simple Hello World service using the Restlet component:

from("restlet:http://0.0.0.0:9091/say/hello/{name}?restletMethod=get")
    .transform().simple("Hello ${header.name}");

JAX-RS REST implementation

JAX-RS (Java API for RESTful Web Services) is a framework for binding REST requests to Java objects, where the Java classes must be decorated with JAX-RS annotations in order to define the binding. The JAX-RS framework is relatively mature and provides a sophisticated framework for developing REST services.

The JAX-RS integration with Apache Camel is implemented by the CXFRS component, it is layered over Apache CXF. Thus, JAX-RS binds a REST request to a Java class using the following annotations:

@Path

Annotation that can map a context path to a Java class or map a sub-path to a particular Java method.

@GET, @POST, @PUT, @DELETE

Annotations that map an HTTP method to a Java method.

@PathParam

Annotation that can either map a URI parameter to a Java method argument or injects a URI parameter into a field.

@QueryParam

Annotation that can either map a query parameter to a Java method argument or injects a query parameter into a field.