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Doug Twitter

Doug Sillars

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Video trends

Here at [api.video](https://api.video/), we talk with lots of developers who are looking for ways to build cool and innovative services with video. Many are still figuring out all of their use cases, and trying to match them with the technical capabilities of different video services.

[Streaming live video](https://api.video/product/live-stream/) is one feature that we receive many questions about. At api.video, **our video streaming solution uses HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to live stream video**. Another technology we are frequently asked about is WebRTC.  Both technologies are great, but have significantly different applications. In this post, we’ll look at the features and advantages of both, and the primary applications that they are suited for.

## What is HLS?

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) was developed by Apple, and is currently the primary way that video is streamed on the web today.  The “live streaming” in the name HLS is a bit of a misnomer, as the video does not need to be live - YouTube, Netflix and other video on demand services use HLS to stream video that is not live.  This is an advantage of using HLS for live streaming - the same files used to deliver the video live can be used to playback the video later ‘on demand.’

The ‘HTTP’ in HLS indicates that it uses traditional web protocols to transmit the data over a TCP connection. The video is cut into small segments and sent from the server to the user. The player on the user’s device recombines the video for playback based on a text based manifest file that is transmitted with the video segments. What makes this powerful is that if you have different versions of the same video (different dimensions and bitrates), the player can optimise the delivery based on the actual conditions for each user (primarily network speed and screen size).

When a live video is being transmitted with HLS, the video is sent to a server and transcoded into segments for transmission to end users. This makes HLS ideal for live streaming in one-to-many streams - once the files are recorded, the files are sent like any other HTTP request and the limitation is essentially the server hosting the video. (and of course with CDNs this overhead can be further reduced).

**Latency**: HLS streaming does suffer from about 6-15 seconds of latency (and depending on architectures, it can even be longer). Since the video is transcoded into segments of finite length, the video must be held up for at least as long as the segment length. To reduce transmission errors, some players require 2 segments to be stored in the playback buffer before playback begins, further pushing playback time away from the exact live event.

NOTE: There is active work being done today to reduce HLS streaming latency, and this is expected to improve over the coming months (and api.video is investing in bringing low latency HLS to our users in the *very* near future).

**HLS Summary**: A robust solution for streaming to many users. The current state of HLS includes 10-20 seconds latency that makes HLS not ideal for interactive presentations. HLS videos are also available for playback after the live event.



## WebRTC

“Web Real Time Communication” or WebRTC is a W3C standard that is supported in all browsers, allowing for - as you might have guessed - real time communication. WebRTC has near instantaneous delivery, typically under 300ms, making it ideal for interactive back and forth conversations like in web conferencing solutions.  

The reduction in latency is (partly) due to the use of UDP instead of TCP, and because the formats being used do not require any transcoding before transmitting.

However, since there is instantaneous delivery of video between peers, there is a limit to the number of users who can share video, typically under 6. There are implementations for WebRTC where a small number of users (under 5) share their video, and another number of users can watch in real time (but this number is usually small - under 300.).  

Each person sharing video uses about 1 MBPS of bandwidth. If there are 4 people streaming, the video is 4 MBPS per viewer - the bandwidth coming out of the server will quickly be the limiting factor for the number of users who may join the stream. Additionally, users on low quality networks may not be able to ingest 4MBPS of video, and have trouble playing back the video due to the size. 

In order to save the video for later playback, the WebRTC implementation will use the MediaRecorder attribute to save the video on a local computer. For later playback, this video will have to be uploaded to a server.

WebRTC is ideal for real-time instantaneous communication, but is for small groups of viewers - typically 1-4 sharing video, and a small number of viewers.


## Are HLS and WebRTC independent?

Melding HLS and WebRTC is actually quite common. For example, if you are hosting a panel of speakers, they could join over WebRTC (like a Zoom call), and then stream the call over HLS to a large audience (Zoom offers this as a feature to increase your audience).

How are you using WebRTC and HLS in your video applications? Feel free to continue this conversation on our developer forum: [community.api.video](https://community.api.video).

Delivering live video: Streaming vs. WebRTC

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Yitzi


If you have kids or know anybody that has kids, then you’ve probably been exposed to the frustration surrounding the rapid and non-optional transition from a classroom learning environment to a remote one.

One of the primary sources of frustration for teachers and parents stems from the need for teachers and students to adopt new technology with which they are unfamiliar.

**Imagine that you are a developer in the booming field of e-learning. Since you are smart, one of your primary goals is to make the interface as self-explanatory and straightforward as possible for teachers and students.**

To accomplish that, you may decide that each student or teacher who logs in should, by default, see only videos relevant to them on their dashboard.

Implementing such customization may seem like a herculean task. After all, you’ve got hundreds of teachers and students and thousands of videos.

Don’t fret. It’s quite easy with api.video’s API.

Let’s dive in!

## A bird’s eye view

Before looking at any code, let’s restate the problem. I’ll begin with the teacher's use case.

**Problem:** We have many teachers uploading videos, and we want each teacher to see only their videos on their dashboard.

**Solution:** We make use of api.video’s **tagging** feature on our backend.

There are two reasons for this:

1. We want to make this as simple as possible. This implementation is entirely invisible to the teachers and requires no action from them, not even a checkbox.
2. Having implemented a login on our backend means that we are holding a unique identifier (i.e., username, id) for our logged-in user. That makes tagging and accurate retrieval a breeze.

## Upload

For simplicities sake, let’s assume that students and teachers share a table in our database that looks like this:


When a teacher logs in, we query this table to authenticate them. It’s trivial to grab the unique username at the same time.

Every time the logged-in teacher uploads a video, we include their “username/tag” in the ‘Create video’ request we make to the api.video API.

When [creating the video](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/video-upload-tutorial/), you can include tags in the request body like so:

An amazing video explaining the string theory

Maths video

We can take this a step further, allowing the teacher to select which course they are uploading the video to and adding a tag for that as well.

**Retrieving the users' videos**
Every video is now associated with the unique identifier of the uploader. When a teacher logs into his video dashboard, all we need to do on the backend is to add their unique identifier to the query string when requesting the video list from api.video’s API.

For example, if the teacher’s unique tag is “einstein,” our request would look like so:

Our backend would get a response from api.video’s API that looks like this:

We can then handle that response however we’d like, passing on to the client app whichever properties we choose, confident that this user uploaded these videos.

**What about the students?**
Applying the above technique to provide each student with a video dashboard tailored to them is simple.

Let’s say we have a table for courses that lists all the essential info for each course.

When a student logs in, it’s a simple query to get the tags of all their courses:

With this information, we can display a friendly UI allowing the student to choose which course they would like to see from a personalized course list.

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Based on their selection, we’ll request their videos from our backend with the appropriate tag attached.

We can then pass the required fields from the response back to the client UI.

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That’s all folks!

I hope you’ve got the picture. Remember, our community is here for you at [community.api.video](https://community.api.video), and you can always reach out to us at hello@api.video.

Thanks for reading!

Creating unique video dashboards for individual users

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api.video

Having a reliable way to filter videos based on specific criteria is a must for most video apps.

For example:
* An e-learning site may want to display different videos to each user, depending on their class list.
* An animal adoption center may choose to display only videos of cats to cat-lovers.
* A site that allows users to upload videos may not want those videos displayed until they get approved by an admin. 
* A fan site may have different levels of membership, where each level gets granted access to additional videos.

Generally, implementing something like this involves much work, takes lots of development time, clutters up your codebase, and can easily lead to bugs and data loss.
It is true that api.video is an API for video. However, we are also an API **for developers**! That is why we decided to include a video tagging and filtering system right into our API.

**Tags to the Rescue!**
api.video’s tagging feature allows you to add tags to each video. Tags can be applied to a video when it is initially created and updated at any point after that.

You can manage your tags using api.video’s web interface as well as directly through the API.

The web interface is useful for learning about tags and for managing them if you have a small number of videos.

If you are dealing with a large number of videos or need tags to be assigned automatically, then you should use the API. Don’t worry. It’s a piece of cake!

The easiest way to understand tags is to begin using them, so let’s get started.

Let’s begin with the web UI and then move on to the API.

**Tagging Videos (Web UI)**
Visit your video [dashboard](https://dashboard.api.video/). If you do not yet have an account, create one when prompted.

Once you are on your dashboard, you can see your video thumbnails with your most recent uploads first. 

My dash looks like this:


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Let’s say I’m the founder and lead developer of petvids.com, the hottest new start-up out of Silicon Valley. I want to provide pet-lovers with the option of choosing whether they would rather see dog videos or cat videos.

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Using the web UI, I can easily click on each video, select “edit video” in the “actions” section, and add the appropriate tag.

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I can demonstrate that the tags are working using the web UI.

This is what I get if I filter for videos with the tag “cat”:

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I think you get the basic idea. Let’s look at how to implement this in the backend of your app using our API.

**API and Additional Queries**
Using our API, you can request a list of all videos with the /videos endpoint:

and if you want to see the videos that you uploaded in “sandbox” mode:

Make sure you have authenticated and are making the request with your “auth” token in the header. More on that [here](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/authentication-tutorial/).

You can see what this request looks like in different frameworks and libraries [here](https://docs.api.video/reference/api/Videos#list-all-video-objects).

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You can try out this request directly from our documentation! Just be sure to authenticate first and then to copy your token into the authorization header.

**Filtering by Tags**
To filter by tags you need only add a ‘tags’ query param with a comma-separated list of values, like so:

In response, I get a list of the following videos:

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Take note that videos can contain additional tags that are not in the query string. In this case, each video has an additional tag of either cat or dog.

Let’s see another example.

What if I want to allow the user to choose to see only videos of brown dogs?

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That does the trick!

A word of caution. A video must have ALL the tags that you are filtering for to be returned to you.

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Searching for “dog” and “cat” does not return videos with “either” tag. It returns videos with “both” tags, in this case, none. To get all videos tagged “cat” or “dog,” you need to make two separate queries.

I hope that clarifies how you can set and update tags using our web UI and how to filter videos by tag(s) with our web UI and API.

**Setting, Updating, and Deleting Tags via the API**
Setting, updating, and deleting tags via the API is pretty straightforward.

When creating the video, you can include tags in the request body like so:

To update or delete tags later, use the [video update endpoint](https://docs.api.video/reference/api/Videos#update-a-video-object).

**Something to be aware of:**
If you include a tags list when updating your video, the list of the existing tags gets overwritten by the new list. If you want only to add new tags and not lose or change existing ones, you need to include the old ones in the update request. To get the current tags, use the [“Get video” endpoint](https://docs.api.video/reference/api/Videos#retrieve-a-video-object).

I hope you feel ready to get started! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask our friendly community of users and experts at [community.api.video](https://community.api.video). Thanks for reading!

Video tags can make your app awesome

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Cédric Montet

JavaScript

In October 2019, after many exchanges with the team, we decided to modify our internal organisation and become a “**remote-first**” company.

Why? Why switch from a classic work environment (presence at the office everyday) to full remote for some of us?

This is not new, remote work has been a growing trend for some years now.

Two reasons pushed us towards the remote life:

## 1.  Better work/life balance

We wanted to offer our collaborators the best work conditions possible. Some of us were spending 1 to 2 hours a day commuting. Financial inconvenience, frustration, stress and long hours are now swept away thanks to the flexibility of remote life. The results? More productivity, better balance, less stress, retention of the talents.

## 2.  Develop a worldwide company culture

We have adopted this change to develop our company culture internationally. [api.video](https://api.video) is particularly used by North America and Asia. Moreover, to grow our team and find specialists in their field, we are looking for the best talents wherever they are located.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*qk-eKuW9pllKw5RpVLaTmQ.jpeg)

How does it work practically?

We have a simple rule: we work from anywhere we want (with a very good Internet connection of course :)) but once a week (Mondays), we all meet at the office. This way we keep a human link and gather to plan the week ahead.

It requires a minimum of organisation before switching. We have tested many tools to find the ones that suit our needs.

So, which tools are we using to keep up good internal communication and follow all projects?

**Equipment:**

*   iMac or Macbook Air according to preferences
*   a comfy chair (Steelcase "Thinks” for us)

**Software:**

*   Slack is used for all daily conversations and projects follow up. The status allows to differentiate who’s in the office and who’s working from home.
*   G Suite allows to manage all the emails, agenda, documents, …
*   Notion is used as a company memory. We write processes, key information, organisation, etc, useful information for any new collaborator.
*   Aircall for the phone. Installed on all computers and after working on the phone workflow, any of us can pick up the phone.
*   Zoom.us is used for video meetings

So many tools are now available to facilitate communication!

Since the beginning, we were convinced that video is the most efficient and human way to communicate.

With Coronavirus shaking the world, organisations and institutions are suddenly changing the way they do business and communicate. The increase of requests for live streaming and VOD to overcome the closing of institutions and potential restrictions shows the importance of video.

For the organisations that did not plan for remote work and now have to adapt to new emergency initiatives to continue their growth, I would advise starting with a video conference tool such as Gotomeeting, Skype or the most efficient according to me: Zoom.us

![the api.video team](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*xomuYsRe9EiKnmx0MG68_A.png)

Zoom will allow you to quickly set up video calls in real time with all your collaborators anywhere in the world, even with a weak Internet connection.

The downside is that Zoom has not been designed to stream to a bigger audience. So if you want to share information to each collaborator it won’t be possible. That’s why we developed an api.video connector for Zoom to increase the communication in real time proposed by the tool.

## 3. How to use Zoom and api.video?

*   Generate recorded version of each video conversation on Zoom.us, to see them or rewatch them
*   Allow having a bigger audience if your message gets to the entire company, even worldwide
*   Have your video conversation in an HTML5 player, allowing anyone to watch in his/her browser or mobile without installing any Zoom.us application or plugin.
*   Get the analytics in real time of your viewers to make sure your message has been spread properly.

We made it very simple to be accessible to all. On the link below you will find all the instructions to test it out!

And [a demo](https://twilight-decorous-mail.glitch.me/?class=li1udrvkK0dX0gVm9ohlcesE), our first ever [Chemistry course](https://twilight-decorous-mail.glitch.me/?class=li1udrvkK0dX0gVm9ohlcesE) :-)

![api.video + zoom.us for large video broadcasting](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*txFmd7HyokGYpdiEZ8yI6Q.png)

zoom.us + api.video in action!

If there is something unclear, you can contact me directly and we can exchange cedric@api.video

* * *

[api.video](https://api.video/) can do much more and be [integrated](https://github.com/apivideo) to your current environment (app, platform, CRM, CMS, …) but this easy connector will make you operational right away!

Of course not all businesses will be able to organise remote work. But many can start implementing better communication with simple tools.

I’ll be glad to have your feedback! What’s your experience with remote work? How do you deal with the COVID-19 situation?

Start remote work with online video and Zoom.us

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Current events have caused the cancellation of face-to-face meetups.  I personally love attending meetups, and have been saddened by the number of cancellations that have been appearing in my inbox.

However, even with millions of us quarantined of self-isolated in our homes, we can still hold a virtual Meetup watching and sharing information.

Many Meetups already have a Slack channel for chatting, so all we need to do is add Video. Live streaming video sounds complicated , but [api.video](https://api.video) has built a video sharing portal(https://watch.a.video/broadcast) for your Meetup.  Your Live Video, and all the recorded videos are all organised on one simple page!  Just 3 simple steps, and you are ready to go with your online meetup streaming.

<a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--BtAcv3Ot--/c_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto%2Cw_880/https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/r42pkmh9v2lxlzqzffz6.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--BtAcv3Ot--/c_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto%2Cw_880/https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/r42pkmh9v2lxlzqzffz6.png" alt="Sample Online Meetup Portal" loading="lazy"></a>


You can try out the demo at [watch.a.video/broadcast](https://watch,a,video/broadcast).  It is currently showing a stream from an empty park, but if you [create your own livestream](https://docs.api.video/reference/api/Live-Streams#create-live-stream), and copy this code from [Github](https://github.com/dougsillars/watchLivestream), you'll be be able to add your stream of your meetup in place of the park!  Sign up for a free api key at [api.video](https://api.video).


 If you have any questions, head over to our <a href="https://community.api.video">community forum</a>.

Interested in moving your meetup online?

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live - create

Video list

NodeJS

With thousands of teachers suddenly teaching classes remotely, many new issues arise. What if your students do not have fast enough internet to use Zoom?  Or cannot install the required software?  How do you share the video recordings?

At [api.video](https://api.video), we've built a portal that can help you quickly organise your videos in one place for your students to watch your livestreams on the web, and also watch all your previous recorded lectures.  Best of all, with our best in class video transcoding service, your lectures can be watched live on connections as slow as 500 KBPS (half of the Zoom requirement!).

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You can try out the Portal here with a sample [French101 portal](https://twilight-decorous-mail.glitch.me/?class=li6FBvQINNAm5CmP4HjQxWqN). At the top of the page is where a video livestream could be watched, and at the bottom are all of the recorded sessions for the class.

The API reference documentation for listing live streams and creating them is available here: 
* [List all live streams](https://docs.api.video/reference/api/Live-Streams#list-all-live-streams)
* [Create live stream](https://docs.api.video/reference/api/Live-Streams#create-live-stream)

**Build your own!**
You do not need to have any coding experience to build your own version of this site. Simply follow the [instructions](https://glitch.com/edit/#!/twilight-decorous-mail?path=README.md:1:0) on the Read Me file, and you should have a portal up and running in no time.

There's also a video walkthrough of the setup:

How are you coping with teaching remotely? Are there tools we can help you with? Join the conversation at [community.api.video](https://community.api.video). Don't forget to sign up for your free [api.video](https://api.video) account to get started in your video sharing journey.

Organize your live streams and recordings on one simple page

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Authenticate

Sharing live video is an exciting way to connect with your audience. But, if the idea of setting up video live stream infrastructure seems daunting, I’d like to reassure you that it does not have to be! 
In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps to get a live video stream up and running in just 5 steps, where only 2 are made to the streaming server!

For simplicity, we’ll stream our video from your laptop camera & mic. The first thing you’ll need is some software to record your live stream and upload it to the streaming server. In this example, we’ll use OBS: it is free, and runs on Linux/Mac/Windows.

## Create a streaming server

We’ll be using [api.video](https://api.video) for our streaming server. By sending just two simple API commands, we will be able to initiate our streaming server.

Once you’ve [created an account](https://dashboard.api.video/register), you’ll end up at the API dashboard, listing your Sandbox API key (The production key will appear when once you have upgraded your account). We’ll need these in a second.

An image of the production and sandbox API keys in your api.video dashboard

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#### Creating the live stream

To create the live stream, we need to send some commands to api.video (check out the API reference documentation here: [live streams](https://docs.api.video/reference/api/Live-Streams#list-all-live-streams)). We’ll use curl in the terminal to communicate with the API.

1. The first thing we need to do is [authenticate](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/authentication-tutorial/) ourselves with our API key. We do that by sending our API key in a post request. In the example below, the stream is being created in the sandbox, so you should use your sandbox API key.


**Tip:** Make sure you replace <your_api_key> with the sandbox API key from api.video. Keep the double quotes around the API key.

You’ll get a response from the server with your Access Token. You’ll need this string, so copy all of the text between the quotes:

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2. Now we create the live stream (yes — it really is just two steps!). To do this, you need to tell api.video the name of your stream (and also provide the access token to prove that you are allowed to create the stream):

This command tells the Live Stream API that you are authorized to make changes (your access token), and then sends a small JSON package naming your stream “Your Stream Name” (feel free to change this if you’d like).

**Tip:** Make sure that when you paste in your access token, you still have that single quote after it.

The response to this command is a JSON file:

The streamKey is used in the next step. You can also see that you have not started streaming yet (broadcasting=false), and there are a bunch of urls. If you open the “Player” url in a browser, you’ll see that you have a live stream! It is not actually streaming any video yet, but we’re getting there.

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This background is the default image — We will show you how to change this at the end of the tutorial.

**Sending video to the server**

3. Now we need to get OBS to start collecting video from your laptop camera, and send it to api.video.

You need to add video sources. Press the + under sources to add a source.

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Select “Video Capture Device” and choose the built in camera from the drop down, and click Ok (example is from a Mac):

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Now you should see your face on the screen, ready for live streaming.

4. Now we can connect the OBS stream to the stream server at api.video. On the bottom right of OBS, click “Settings”, and open the “Stream” settings. Under Service, select Custom, and add “rtmp://broadcast.api.video/s” for the server, and copy the stream Key from the JSON response in step 2.

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Alternatively, you can use the preset settings in OBS under api.video.

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Save the settings

5. Click “Start Streaming” in OBS to start sending video from your camera to the streaming server. Open your browser to the Player URL from Step 2, and in a few short seconds, your live stream will appear!

**A live stream in 5 steps!**
That’s all there is to it! Share the links, place them on your site, and stream away. When you are done, just press “stop streaming” in OBS.

**Bonus step: Adding a custom background poster**
You may have noticed that the poster video for your live stream was the default image from api.video. If you’d like to change the background image to something more on brand while people wait for your live stream, you just need your liveStreamId and a jpg image:

This will update the poster thumbnail for your video.

## Conclusion
Creating and sharing a live video stream might sound like a complicated process, but using api.video we were able to quickly and painlessly create a live stream.
With just two API commands, we set up a streaming server that allows us to share our local stream with thousands of users around the world. Then we configured a local application to transmit the data to the server and began our broadcast.
don't hestate to reach us on [our community](https://community.api.video/) or [start building](https://dashboard.api.video/register) right now!

Video live streaming in just 5 easy steps

Video Live Streaming in Just 5 Easy Steps

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Twitter (Anne-Sophie)

Anne-Sophie Poupard

So you want to compete with one of the world’s largest corporations, a household brand name that operates just about everywhere?

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Awesome! We love a good challenge just as much as the next API provider. Building the next Netflix is no small task. Creating a so called “global TV network” requires a complex set of skills and knowledge. Remember, Netflix is a global platform, not just a content delivery network. Along with your streaming content, there’s the recommendation system, content database, the global farm of servers, and a constantly reliable payments system to support it all. Quite a lot of tools to juggle!

As you start on your journey towards global content domination, it’s important to find tools that quickly and easily integrate with each other, that way you can spend less time coding your site and more time finding great content for your audience. Here are a few APIs you can use to get started:

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1. Algolia — Search Platform
Algolia offers a reliable search platform for building search into your next Netflix. Their search engine API offers many features necessary for a robust search and database platform, including typo-tolerance, geosearch, and language-agnostic queries.

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2. Stripe — Monetization

Stripe provides APIs that web developers can use to integrate payment processing into their websites and mobile applications. Their online payment processing system includes anti-fraud tools that run alongside their payments API in case of fraudulent transactions. You’ll need a robust payments platform to keep your global TV network running.

3. api.video — Video Management Platform

Our [api.video platform](https://api.video) is video infrastructure for product builders. This means that you can start within minutes, integrating a video stream (or streams) into your product using only a few lines of code. 
Our API was built specifically to answer frequently requested and long tail, on-demand videos, which means it’s the perfect tool if you’re trying to build the next Netflix. Our cloud infrastructure optimizes encoding and delivery for any network. Whether it’s 4K, HD, or SD, we guarantee videos that stream to any screen in the best quality possible.


Using APIs to build your next Netflix will help you scale easily along with your audience. Minimizing the integration grunt work can save you time on development and coding, which means more bandwidth for creating your next site and service.
You can reach our [community](https://community.api.video/) to ask questions or [create a free account](https://dashboard.api.video/register) to start building now.

How to build the next Netflix

We’re pretty familiar with the REST standard, and feel fairly confident answering this question. Our product, api.video was developed on the REST standard, chosen so that our API can scale rapidly and utilize the cloud to facilitate immediate playback no matter the device or platform. So, what exactly is a RESTful API and why are they so popular?

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A RESTful API is a standard approach to creating a web service communication protocol. REST stands for Representational State Transfer, but just what exactly does that mean? What are we transferring and what is being represented? In this scenario we are using a representation of a resource to transfer a resource state living on a server to an application state on the client slide. To put it even more simply, RESTful APIs work by accessing data when requesting services, a function that makes them perfect fit for a public facing API operating on the Internet, and why over 70% of public APIs were developed using the REST architectural style.

Now that we understand what a RESTful API, let’s dive a little deeper. Just how exactly does a RESTful API work? Luckily for you and for us, REST web service instructions operate under the hypertext transfer protocol, also known as HTTP. Very briefly, HTTP serves as the foundation of communication on our internet. It functions as a request-response protocol in the client-server computing model, i.e a client (web browser, web crawler, mobile apps, software) submits a request message to the server (site, service, computer), and the service responds in return with a response message or resource. Sound familiar? Well it should, since that’s exactly how RESTful APIs operate!

Even better for the lazy or perhaps enterprising developer, is that RESTful APIs use the same instructions as HTTP. This means less learning and more coding. As mentioned in other answers, these instructions and their corresponding operations include:

POST - Create

GET - Read

PUT - Update/Replace

PATCH - Update/Modify

DELETE - Delete

One more thing to keep in mind: As per the REST (Representational State Transfer) architecture, the server does not store any sate about the client session and vice-versa. This means that the operations function on a stateless protocol, meaning that when the sender (client) transmits a packet to the receiver (server), the sender does not expect an acknowledgement of receipt, in other words, the system doesn’t maintain information about the session during its life. Due to their stateless nature, REST APIs have proven to be highly adaptive in cloud based applications.

In summary, RESTful APIs are an architectural standard for developing a web service. They operate using the same instructions as HTTP and are inherently well suited for the Cloud. These characteristics are the reason why RESTful APIs make up over 70% of all public APIs on the internet.

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