This article series will take you through RESTful web services, introducing the technologies behind them, what they are, how to use them and how to implement them.

The series is presented in five parts, each of which will be posted over the next few days so sign up to the MMMeeja RSS feed to make sure you don't miss a single post!

REST (or Representational State Transfer) is fast becoming the de facto standard for exposing APIs on the web, beating more complex SOAP/RPC services. It's easy to understand why - it's a logical extension to how we all use the web already - as you'll see as the series continues.

I start off with a couple of introductory articles to the underlying technologies to get you up to speed:

1. What Is A URL?
2. An Introduction To HTTP

Then, let's get to the meat with:

3. Examples Of REST Interfaces
4. Using RESTful Web Services

And for the more advanced:

5. Designing And Implementing A RESTful Interface

So, the series will be a trip from n00b to l33t h4xx0r in five installments. Don't forget to subscribe.

Creative Commons licensed photo by Bobby ~ Lawcrow911.