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Developing RESTful JSON Services with REST/JAX-RS

This course provides in-depth coverage of REST principles and building RESTful services using the JAX-RS 2.0 API. It includes a brief overview of SOAP-based services and WSDL, to provide a contrast to RESTful services.

To really understand REST, we need to remind (teach) students about the full capabilities of HTTP, since RESTful service design is centered on the innate principles and capabilities of the HTTP protocol. Stated differently, RESTful services should use HTTP the way it was originally intended, not just as GET/POST plumbing for request/response data. You will emerge from the course with a full understanding of the HTTP protocol and its vision of the “original web,” and how these ideas are implemented in RESTful applications.

We’ll show you how to handle the most common types of request input, culminating in the transmission of HTTP entities in JSON format. You’ll also learn how to create appropriate responses given a variety of inputs and conditions, according to the guidelines and principles in the HTTP standard.

On the client side, we look at Ajax-JavaScript clients, as well as standalone Java clients using the JAX-RS 2.0 Client API.

Your daily personal use of the web is increasingly RESTful, and this course will show you how to expose your backend business systems using REST and the innate API and capabilities of HTTP. We also take cues from the masters such as Google, examining some of their public services and using them as a backdrop in building our own.

The course is very hands-on with frequent labs, in which the student can see these ideas implemented in software.

Attendees must be experienced in Java and preferably familiar Java web applications and other Java EE standards. Familiarity with Ajax, JavaScript, and JSON is also beneficial, but not required.

All labs are done with the Eclipse IDE Java EE version and the WildFly Application Server, and the lab instructions include detailed directions for using them. Other IDEs and servers available on request.

Course Objectives:

  • Understand the purpose and role of web services in general, and how they are architected to expose business systems and processes over the web
  • Understand the concepts and principles of REST and HTTP applications
  • Expanded knowledge of HTTP, including its full set of methods and their intended uses, important headers, response codes, and content types
  • Understand REST APIs, including resource identifiers and the URI namespace, resources and subresources, and WADL
  • Understand configuration, deployment, and the runtime environment, including per-request and singleton objects, options for dependency injection, etc.
  • Understand how HTTP requests get dispatched to service methods
  • Understand content negotiation and the importance of Accept and Content-Type headers, and how they impact method dispatching
  • Bind request inputs to method parameters, including path parameters, query parameters, and headers
  • Exchange business data by communicating in HTTP entities using JSON format
  • Handle errors using Java exceptions and appropriate HTTP response codes
  • Learn how to integrate JAX-RS services with other Java EE technologies like servlets, EJB, and CDI, and how JAX-RS fits into the larger Java EE landscape
  • Write browser clients using Ajax-JavaScript
  • Write Java clients using the JAX-RS 2.0 Client API, including standalone clients and server-side components invoking remote services
  • Learn how to secure RESTful resources
  • Integrate RESTful resources with a database
  • Be familiar with JEE Web components as JAX-RS clients

Course Outline: