A Conversation Based Approach for Modeling REST APIs

Abstract

Abstract-Conversations are a well-known concept in service design to describe complex interactions between a client and one or multiple services. The REST architectural style constrains the characteristics of clients, servers and their interactions in REST architectures which consequently has an impact on conversations in such systems. The relation between conversations and REST architectures and how such RESTful conversations can be characterized has not been studied in detail yet. In this paper we discuss the characteristics of conversations in REST architectures and introduce an initial set of commonly used conversation types. Based on this, we propose to use conversations as a modeling tool for the design of REST APIs at a higher level of abstraction. We also introduce a corresponding interaction centric metamodel for REST APIs. The characterization of RESTful conversations enables a new interaction centric viewpoint on REST architectures which can be also applied for modeling REST APIs on an abstraction level that enables users to focus on the essential functionality of their REST API.

Data Service API Design for Data Analytics

“…As shown in Some API designs use hypermedia or links to show the next data view page. In [36], the collections conversation type is mainly used into acquire large collections by retrieving the target entry and acquire the resources within the collection, the partial representation of which will embed hyperlinks to the first, last as well as the next/previous sets.…”

Visual modeling of RESTful conversations with RESTalk

“…While UML sequence diagrams can be a good starting point when dealing with simple conversations [16], they are limited in concisely presenting conversations that can follow alternative paths.…”

“…This has also been confirmed by a recent empirical study [39], which among other aspects, also explored how service to service communication is implemented in industry. As more and more Web services adopt the constraints of REST, conversations remain an important concept when reasoning about how clients make use of RESTful Web APIs [36] over multiple HTTP request-response interactions [16].…”

“…RESTful conversations have been introduced in [16], where they are used as an abstraction mechanism to simplify the modeling of individual RESTful APIs. In traditional messaging systems, conversations involve a set of related messages exchanged by two or more parties [4,18].…”

“…While using standard UML sequence diagrams to visually represent a sample of RESTful conversations in [16], we have realized the need for a domain-specific notation. The goal of such notation would be to visualize all possible interactions that may occur in a given RESTful conversation, and thus, we have named it RESTalk.…”