The popularity of REST in recent years has led to tremendous growth in almost-RESTful APIs that don't include many of the architecture's benefits With this practical guide you'll learn what it takes to design usable REST APIs that evolve over time By focusing on solutions that cross a variety of domains this book shows you how to create powerful & secure applications using the tools designed for the world's most successful distributed computing system the World Wide Web You'll explore the concepts behind REST learn different strategies for creating hypermedia-based APIs & then put everything together with a step-by-step guide to designing a RESTful Web APIExamine API design strategies including the collection pattern & pure hypermedia Understand how hypermedia ties representations together into a coherent API Discover how XMDP & ALPS profile formats can help you meet the Web API semantic challenge Learn close to two-dozen standardized hypermedia data formats Apply best practices for using HTTP in API implementations Create Web APIs with the JSON-LD standard & other the Linked Data approaches Understand the Co AP protocol for using REST in embedded systems