Uses of web-related protocols/architectural styles

[Epy]

So every time I've had to do web dev I've only barely gotten by, mainly because I have a probably script-kiddie level understanding of HTML, CSS, etc. As such I usually avoid touching that kind/area of programming. Last thing I did was some PHP work on our company website (WordPress-based).

Also as such, I don't really know much about web-related protocols or what they're used for. Finally looking up a lot of the terms I see commonly on GitHub pages and whatnot, such as: SOAP, RESTful API, WebSocket, JSON-RPC, and XML-RPC.

So I get the idea of each and how it works, but what would be some good uses of each? I get why WebSocket would be handy, but the rest just basically seem like they exist solely for abstraction, i.e. you don't want to re-invent the wheel every time you have to develop a client/server for something.

[MutantJohn]

I like REST because you can organize your website as a series of verbs and nouns. This way, your url is free from verbs. Aside from that, I've only used SOAP for some awful XML-based APIs and it was miserable.

[Elkvis]

Aside from that, I've only used SOAP for some awful XML-based APIs and it was miserable.

In my experience, SOAP is only not miserable when you're doing it with the .Net framework. They do an absolutely outstanding job of abstracting it into native objects and functions/methods. I'm forced to use gSOAP as a client for some of my stuff at work, and I absolutely hate it with a passion that burns like the fire of a thousand suns. After you use the gSOAP tools to generate the basic client proxy, you have to go through it manually and write wrapper classes, if you want the code to be even remotely human-readable. There's been a number of times when I considered writing my own SOAP library, possibly based on gSOAP, that generates more human-readable client code.

[stahta01]

In my experience, SOAP is only not miserable when you're doing it with the .Net framework. They do an absolutely outstanding job of abstracting it into native objects and functions/methods. I'm forced to use gSOAP as a client for some of my stuff at work, and I absolutely hate it with a passion that burns like the fire of a thousand suns. After you use the gSOAP tools to generate the basic client proxy, you have to go through it manually and write wrapper classes, if you want the code to be even remotely human-readable. There's been a number of times when I considered writing my own SOAP library, possibly based on gSOAP, that generates more human-readable client code.

So, you thought about cleaning up gSOAP.

Sorry, I could NOT pass up the pun.

Tim S.

[MutantJohn]

So basically, thank God XML isn't used that much anymore. I'm happy that we can just send stuff as JSON blobs. The only thing that kind of miffs me is that browsers seem to only implement GET/POST requests while you have to use XmlHttpRequest to get the fancier verbs like DELETE and PUT.

But that only matters if you want to create a RESTful API. Which I think you should! You want to DELETE /user/photos or maybe even PUT a /user/photo. It just makes more sense, guys!