REST, short for Representational State Transfer, is a type of software architectural style.

As a resource-oriented architectural style, REST emphasizes on observing the entire network from the perspective of resources. Resources can be specific data, or services that can implement certain functionality. A resource is uniquely identified by a URI, short for Uniform Resource Identifier, and the client can get the representation of the resource through the URI, which makes the state of the resource on the client changes.

REST is based on protocols and standards such as HTTP, URI, XML, and HTML.

SuperMap iPortal employs the REST architectural style and provides iPortal REST API compliant with the HTTP protocol. The APIs provided encapsulate most of the GIS functionality. SuperMap iPortal presents the GIS functionality to the clients as resources. The client can achieve operations on the resources using iPortal REST API to get the corresponding GIS capabilities.

SuperMap iPortal REST API features:

• The resource provided by SuperMap iPortal is uniquely identified by URI.
• SuperMap iPortal REST API uses standard HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.
• SuperMap iPortal provides multiple forms of representation for resources.

The HTTP version supported by SuperMap iPortal REST API is HTTP/1.1.

See:

• Please see Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures by Roy Thomas Fielding to know more about the REST architectural style.
• Constructing REST Requests
• Protected REST Resources Based on Token Access
• Status Codes
• SuperMap iPortal REST API Output Formats
• GIS Services Resource Hierarchy
• Management Resource Hierarchy
• Portal Resource Hierarchy
• Life Cycle of Temporary Resource