A URI does not identify the HTTP method, but the URL and URN; does this mean the REST API is beyond these?

Hi Matthew,

You are confusing the access method and the http request method. The access method is the bit at the beginning of a URL that describes the protocol used for accessing the resource, like "http://", "https://", "ftp://", etc.

The http request method is the set of verbs that Alena was talking about: "GET", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE", etc.

When using a web browser, you generally don't see the http request method as it doesn't appear in your browser's address bar. But when it sends a request to a web server, the first line of the request (that the server receives from your browser) (aka the "Request Line") looks like this:

GET http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TheProject.html HTTP/1.1

The first part of the request is the http request method. Here we're making a GET request: the typical request when browsing a web page.

Then after a space, is the URI for the resource being requested. In this case it is a full URL with the protocol (access method) but often you'll see just the part of the location after the domain name, and when that's the root page of the website, it's just a /:

GET / HTTP/1.1

The last part in the request line is the protocol version, in this case HTTP version 1.1.

Note that REST describes the API scheme, not a particular URL. That said, a particular URL may or may not conform to the site's REST API.

Hope that clears things up.

Cheers

Alex