WhatfettleDo you think this URI smells RESTful?

Sam Ruby picks up on Anne:

Notice that the URL contains a method name (getInfo) and query string containing the method parameters. This is NOT REST!

This tallies with one of my current pet peeves, people who think you can look at a URI and say anything about REST. I guess in time such folks may learn to say “unlikely to be cool” or “I'm a URL fetishist and that doesn't fry my ham” than state absolutes involving the R-word.

What I like about the Web is it doesn't tell me how to think, just how to behave, so I know it's safe to shove Anne's URI into my browser, GET it and regardless of the English words which may appear amongst the punctuation no kittens will die, no nuclear missiles will fire, unless someone is being careless. What's more I don't need to know if the publisher happens to think of it as a method invocation because as soon as they give me a URI, it becomes a resource. Who's to say Google think “search” is a verb whilst I think it's a noun. Doesn't matter one jot!

All the same, hats off to the likes of Anne Thomas-Manes, Pete Lacey, Nick Gall, Burton and Gartner for starting to talk up REST and the Web. That makes educating vendor led IT wallahs that there's this thing called “The Web” a whole lot easier.

In other news, just love the book!