SOAP and REST are the most popular and widely used API approaches today.While both methods provide communication between different applications, they have significant differences. In this blog post, we will examine the differences between REST (Representational State Transfer) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) in detail.
What is an API?
API (Application Programming Interface) is defined as an interface that helps to communicate and exchange data between two or more web applications. Thanks to the API, businesses can do better by getting the opportunity to provide data flow between different software and applications. For example, an e-commerce business can use a payment API such as paypal for online payment transactions.
What is REST API?
REST stands for Representational State Transfer. It is also known as REST API or RESTful API. REST is an architectural style that uses HTTP protocols and URLs such as GET, PUT, POST, DELETE to facilitate communication between different platforms.
REST APIs use GET to retrieve data, POST to send data to another server, PUT to update existing data, and DELETE to delete certain resources.
RESTful API plays an important role in web services. It provides a simple, uniform interface for making data, content, algorithms, media and other digital resources available. In this way, an application can access the same type of data no matter which browser or operating system it runs on.
What is SOAP API?
SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. SOAP API is a communication protocol that enables the exchange of structured data between different applications. It uses an XML-based messaging system. It is also compatible with different transport protocols such as http, FTP, SMTP. SOAP API is platform and language independent, meaning that it can run on various operating systems and programming languages.
SOAP offers a high standard in terms of security. In addition to SSL support, a standard called WS-Security (Web Services Security) provides enterprise-level security features to SOAP web services. That is, when exchanging data using SOAP, security measures such as data integrity, confidentiality and authentication are taken.
What are the Differences Between SOAP and REST?
The main differences between SOAP and REST approaches are listed below:
- SOAP functions as a communication protocol, while REST is defined as an architectural style for designing networked applications.
- REST is a data-oriented architecture, while SOAP is a standardised protocol for transferring function-oriented structured information.
- REST provides access to a source for data. SOAP performs a transaction.
- Since SOAP is a protocol and REST is an architectural style, SOAP cannot implement REST principles directly. REST has the ability to use SOAP web services because it is an architecture.
- SOAP API uses service interfaces to expose certain aspects of business logic. REST uses URLs.
- The Java API used for SOAP APIs is JAX-WS, while the Java API used for REST APIs is JAX-RS.
- SOAP sets some standards that must be complied with. REST does not set too many standards.
- SOAP API uses more bandwidth and resources. REST API uses less.
- It is possible to cache REST calls. It is not possible to cache SOAP calls.
- SOAP only allows XML data format. RESTful allows different data formats such as HTML, JSON, XML.
