Dave Johnson gave a great talk Tuesday at JavaOne (TS-1756 - Java™ Technology and REST: Implementing the Atom Protocol). I've been a fan of his roller weblogger for a few years (it's the best option for hosting your own multiple blog server) and it was great to hear him speak and to put a face to the blog server. (It's amazing how much we can learn about the personalities involved in an open source project (blogs, talks, etc.) and how this can affect our opinions of the project and software, i.e. if the team is cool I am more eager to use their project.)

Dave showcased some of the work he has done for his upcoming book and demo-ed just how easy it is to use REST and the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP).

This is one of the reasons I love REST -- REST is just XML and HTTP. All you need is an XML parser and an HTTP client. Dave prefers the Apache HTTPClient and using the APP means that all XML will be Atom, so we can use ROME. Life is easy!

See Dave's slides for code samples to implement these simple REST servers and clients (and links to the actual code itself).

Here are the points from Dave's summary slide (I couldn't agree more):

• Those REST folks have a point
  • REST is easy
• Don't use WS-* unless you really need it
  • i.e. You need to tie into some existing WS-* service
• Atom is not just for blogs
  • It might be all you need for your REST based WS
  • The format can carry almost anything
  • Collections + CRUD can do almost anything

Take a look at the slides for yourself and also view Blogapps for all the examples.

Links/References

• Dave Johnson's Blog
• Dave Johnson's Talk - Detail | Slides (requires login, try user: contentbuilder pass: doc789)
• Roller Weblogger
• Blogapps
• Apache HTTPClient
• ROME
• REST
• Atom Publishing Protocol (APP)