Suvarna Garge (Editor)

Restlet

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Development status
  
Active

Operating system
  
Cross-platform

Written in
  
Java

Stable release
  
2.3.6 / January 26, 2016 (2016-01-26)

Website
  
restlet.com/projects/restlet-framework/

Restlet is a lightweight, comprehensive, open source RESTful web API framework for the Java platform. Restlet is suitable for both server and client Web applications. It supports major Internet transport, data format, and service description standards like HTTP and HTTPS, SMTP, XML, JSON, Atom, and WADL. A GWT port of the client-side library is also available as well as other editions for Android, OSGi and Google App Engine.

Contents

Licenses

Restlet is available under five different licenses:

  • Apache ver 2.0
  • CDDL ver 1.0
  • LGPL ver 2.1
  • LGPL ver 3.0
  • EPL ver 1.0

    • Architecture

    Restlet directly models the concepts (Resource, Representation, Connector, Component, etc.) from Roy T. Fielding's original dissertation on the architecture of the Web, Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures.

    The Restlet framework is composed of two main parts. First, there is the "Restlet API", a neutral API supporting the concepts of REST and facilitating the handling of calls for both client-side and server-side applications. This API must be supported by a Restlet implementation before it can effectively be used. Multiple implementations could be provided (open source projects or commercial products).

    It is available in six consistent editions. Each edition targets a special development environment:

  • Google Web Toolkit (GWT) for AJAX applications deployed in desktop browsers, without any plugin required;
  • Google App Engine (GAE/J) for deployment on Google’s cloud computing infrastructure;
  • Android for deployment on compatible smartphones;
  • Java SE for standalone deployments in regular Java Virtual Machines;
  • Java EE for deployment in Servlet engines.
  • OSGi for deployment in OSGi environments.

    • Connectors

    The list of available connectors splits into:

  • Server connectors: Servlet, Spring, Jetty, Simple, JAXB, JAX-RS, JiBX, Velocity;
  • Client connectors: Internal (JDK's HttpURLConnection), Apache HTTP Client, JavaMail, JDBC.

    • History

    Founder Jerome Louvel of Noelios Consulting began the Restlet project in December 2005, and was the primary developer and committer through the project's 1.0 release in April, 2007. He was subsequently joined by Thierry Boileau, also of Noelios, and an expanding list of extension developers from the Restlet community.

    The May, 2007 publication of the O'Reilly book RESTful Web Services featured Restlet alongside Django and Rails.

    Restlet 1.1 was released October 28, 2008, and included support for GWT and the then-emerging JAX-RS standard.

    On May 6, 2009, Jerome Louvel announced that the planned 1.2 release of Restlet would be renamed 2.0, mainly due to significant changes in the modeling of resources. 2.0 was released on July 19, 2010.

    On September 20, 2012, Jerome Louvel announced the 2.1 release adding an edition for OSGi environments, a migration to GitHub and several other enhancements.

    On March 27, 2014, Swann Vichot announced the 2.2 release adding and several other enhancements.

    A Restlet book ("Restlet In Action") has been published by Noelios and Manning Press in fall 2012.

    References

    Restlet Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA