What is the difference between resource and endpoint

Question

I have heard both  resource  and  endpoint  to refer to the same thing  It seems that resource is a newer term   What is the difference between them  Does  resource  imply a RESTful design

User · Answer

According https   apiblueprint org documentation examples 13-named-endpoints html is a resource a  general  place of storage of the given entity - e g   customers 30654 orders  whereas an endpoint is the concrete action  HTTP Method  over the given resource  So one resource can have multiple endpoints

User · Answer

REST Resource is a RESTful subset of Endpoint  An endpoint by itself is the location where a service can be accessed  https   www google com      Serves HTML 8 8 8 8                     Serves DNS  services service asmx      Serves an ASP NET Web Service  A resource refers to one or more nouns being served  represented in namespaced fashion  because it is easy for humans to comprehend   api users johnny           Look up johnny from a users collection   v2 books 1234              Get book with ID 1234 in API v2 schema   All of the above could be considered service endpoints  but only the bottom group would be considered resources  RESTfully speaking  The top group is not expressive regarding the content it provides  A REST request is like a sentence composed of nouns  resources  and verbs  HTTP methods    GET  method  the user named johnny  resource   DELETE  method  the book with id 1234  resource     Non-REST Endpoint typically refers to a service  but resource could mean a lot of things  Here are some examples of resource that are dependent on the context they re used in  URL  Uniform  quot Resource quot  Locator  Could be RESTful  but often is not  In this case  endpoint is almost synonymous   Resource Management  In GCP   AWS  resource is used in reference to cloud infrastructure  In general computing  a resource is a reference to a component with limited availability   Dictionary  The definitions provide many more uses of the word    Something that can be used to help you  The library was a valuable resource  and he frequently made use of it  Resources are natural substances such as water and wood which are valuable in supporting life    pl   The earth has limited resources  and if we don   t recycle them we use them up  Resources are also things of value such as money or possessions that you can use when you need them    pl   The government doesn   t have the resources to hire the number of teachers needed    The Moral The term resource by definition has a lot of nuance  It all depends on the context its used in

User · Answer

The terms resource and endpoint are often used synonymously  But in fact they do not mean the same thing   The term endpoint is focused on the URL that is used to make a request  The term resource is focused on the data set that is returned by a request     Now  the same resource can often be accessed by multiple different endpoints  Also the same endpoint can return different resources  depending on a query string   Let us see some examples   Different endpoints accessing the same resource  Have a look at the following examples of different endpoints    api companies 5 employees 3  api v2 companies 5 employees 3  api employees 3   They obviously could all access the very same resource in a given API   Also an existing API could be changed completely  This could lead to new endpoints that would access the same old resources using totally new and different URLs    api employees 3  new api staff 3   One endpoint accessing different resources  If your endpoint returns a collection  you could implement searching filtering sorting using query strings  As a result the following URLs all use the same endpoint   api companies   but they can return different resources  or resource collections  which by definition are resources in themselves     api companies  api companies sort name asc  api companies location germany  api companies search siemens

User · Answer

Possibly mine isn t a great answer but here goes   Since working more with truly RESTful web services over HTTP  I ve tried to steer people away from using the term endpoint since it has no clear definition  and instead use the language of REST which is resources and resource locations   To my mind  endpoint is a TCP term  It s conflated with HTTP because part of the URL identifies a listening server   So resource isn t a newer term  I don t think  I think endpoint was always misappropriated and we re realising that as we re getting our heads around REST as a style of API   Edit  I blogged about this   https   medium com  lukepuplett stop-saying-endpoints-92c19e33e819

User · Answer

1  Resource description    Resources    refers to the information returned by an API   2  Endpoints and methods The endpoints indicate how you access the resource  while the method indicates the allowed interactions  such as GET  POST  or DELETE  with the resource   Additional info  3  Parameters Parameters are options you can pass with the endpoint  such as specifying the response format or the amount returned  to influence the response   4  Request example The request example includes a sample request using the endpoint  showing some parameters configured   5  Response example and schema The response example shows a sample response from the request example  the response schema defines all possible elements in the response   Source- Reference link

User · Answer

Consider a server which has the information of users  missions and their reward points    Users and Reward Points are the resources An end point can relate to more than one resource Endpoints can be described using either a description or a full or partial URL     Source   API Endpoints vs Resources

[rest] What is the difference between resource and endpoint?

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