Leonard Richardson & Sam Ruby
I picked this book up from the Powell's booth while at RailsConf 2007. I had been following the online manuscript for a while and as soon as I saw that the book was in print I snapped it right up. I wasn't the only one either. REST was a very hot topic at RailsConf and I saw a lot of other attendees with a copy under their arm.
I've been keenly interested in REST for about the last year and a half. I've read
Fielding's dissertation a couple of times and read some good blogs, but really felt like REST was missing a more accessible, canonical resource. After completing this book, I think I've finally found one.
The author's do an excellent job of distilling the principles of REST and describe an imlementation of it they term Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA) which has specific recommendations. I'm pretty sure that my copy will be referred to time and again and that I will probably eventually re-read its contents. I only wish the authors had done more to address using REST in human-facing web applications, not just web services.
4 out 5 stars.