kb/data/developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/REST-0.md

10 KiB

title chunk source category tags date_saved instance
REST - Glossary | MDN 1/3 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/REST reference web, html, css, javascript, documentation 2026-05-05T05:41:48.931622+00:00 kb-cron

MDN HTML HTML: Markup language

HTML reference

HTML guides

Markup languages

CSS CSS: Styling language

CSS reference

CSS guides

Layout cookbook

JavaScriptJS JavaScript: Scripting language

JS reference

JS guides

Web APIs Web APIs: Programming interfaces

Web API reference

Web API guides

All All web technology

Technologies

Topics

Learn Learn web development

Frontend developer course

Learn HTML

Learn CSS

Learn JavaScript

Tools Discover our tools

About Get to know MDN better

Blog

  1. Glossary
  2. REST

REST

REST (Representational State Transfer) refers to a group of software architecture design constraints that bring about efficient, reliable and scalable distributed systems. The basic idea of REST is that a resource, e.g., a document, is transferred via well-recognized, language-agnostic, and reliably standardized client/server interactions. Services are deemed RESTful when they adhere to these constraints. HTTP APIs in general are sometimes colloquially referred to as RESTful APIs, RESTful services, or REST services, although they don't necessarily adhere to all REST constraints. Beginners can assume a REST API means an HTTP service that can be called using standard web libraries and tools.

In this article

See also