[erlang-questions] HTTPS and Basic Authentication with Erlang

[Loïc Hoguin]

On 02/16/2017 02:34 AM, Kenneth Lakin wrote:
> On 02/15/2017 12:37 AM, David Wright wrote:
>> However I would like to write a restful API and decode the URL and
> obtain parameters
>> for the API method.

Cowboy comes with a REST basic auth example: 
https://git.ninenines.eu/cowboy.git/tree/examples/rest_basic_auth

> AFAIK, the "magic" of REST is behaving in a vaguely-standard way to
> requests containing particular METHODs at particular paths.

What you describe is *HTTP*.

The "magic" of REST is to not have to write a client for every single 
API out there, and instead only write the higher level logic about the 
media types that are manipulated (which are often standard themselves, 
for example (X)HTML). The server can then instruct the client what media 
types are available and what operations you can do with them.

Browsers are a good example of REST clients. You don't need a separate 
browser for every single website.

Most phone apps and "REST API" clients are good examples of non-REST 
clients. They're written against a specific API and make many out of 
band assumptions.

Note that REST is an architectural pattern and doesn't apply only to 
HTTP, and that HTTP is not enough to have REST: you also need at the 
very least to have media types that support hyperlinks and forms (or 
other ways of describing operations on resources).

Which implies that all APIs that only serve application/json are not 
REST APIs...

Cheers,

-- 
Loïc Hoguin
https://ninenines.eu