New Book Review: "RESTful Java Patterns and Best Practices"
New book review for RESTful Java Patterns and Best Practices, by Bhakti Mehta, Packt Publishing, 2014, reposted here:
Concise 125-page, 6-chapter presentation on how to efficiently build scalable, reliable, and maintainable high performance REST services that is among the very few available newer texts on the subject in the 2015 marketplace. While this book reminds me somewhat of another Packt text that I read a couple years ago on a completely different subject entitled "Instant Drools Starter", because of its brevity and no-nonsense style, the difference here is that the author does cover considerable ground with its small footprint. Unlike some other publishers which can offer more consistency with regard to what developers can expect from their offerings, be confident that this particular book provides a good starting point for those new to REST services.
After discussing basic concepts, design principles, and best practices, the author covers different request response patterns, content negotiation, resource versioning, and response codes, followed by security and traceability, designing for performance, advanced design principles, and emerging standards and the future of REST. The 11-page appendix also offers a glimpse into REST services offered by GitHub, Twitter, and Facebook. One important aspect of this book of which potential readers need to be aware is that it uses the JAX-RS 2.0 API for all code snippets (partial examples) outside of this appendix and chapter 6 (no other frameworks are covered), and probably should not be relied upon even for development using this Java API.
For an introductory look at REST services, the decision to include the appendix was probably misguided, and the chapter on emerging standards and the future of REST, although providing a needed overview of real-time APIs, polling, WebHooks, and WebSockets, is very rushed and should probably be treated by most developers as a bookmark for further research outside what Mehta has to offer. However, the rest of the book (the first 5 chapters) will likely be a good primer for anyone newer to REST services, including those looking to incorporate REST services into other ecosystems such as Spring applications, because it provides a bigger picture view (apart from JAX-RS) than is typically offered by other resources concentrating on specific technologies.