Zoom on API protocols

Par le menu

• introduction and overview
• SOAP
• REST
• gRPC
• GraphQL
• and some more (Json-RPC, XML-RPC, Apache Thrift)

Introduction

API (Application Programming Interface) enable commuication between services. Request/Reponse model using protocol to exchange data.

Exchange based on transport (and protocol) would be view as :

• Request/Response format
• Request structure
• Response Structure
• Transport layer
• Endpoint

Web service - W3C definition : software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network.

• designed for machine-to-machine (or application-to-application) interaction
• interoperable (not plateform dependent)
• allow communication over a network

Review of various API protocols
RedHat Architecture guide to APIs
Roy T Fielding : Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures
Perspective in Microservice world : SOA vs Microservice

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

SOAP on W3 org

• Format : SOAP XML Request and Response (with envelope, optional Header and Body)
• Transport
  • SOAP over MQ
  • SOAP over HTTP
• Service definition : WSDL

REST (Representational State Transfert)

REST is the set of constraints. RESTful refers to an API adhering to those constraints

Wikipedia REST page
Richardson Maturity Model

gRPC

An open source high performance Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
gRPC is using protocol buffer

GraphQL

GraphQL, intially from Facebook (2012) is now under GraphQL foundation (under Linux foundation)

GraphQL
GraphQL Spec

Some more

Apache Thrift software framework, for scalable cross-language services development