Give SOAP a REST

I’ve had opportunity recently to help spec and design a rather complex web service API. The choices are usually SOAP, XML-RPC or REST. REST has always been my favorite. Why? It’s just so damn simple to write apps against it. When I’ve got to create a web service client it’s always disappointing to find that the only interface is SOAP. While SOAP has a few advantages, they seem academic and mostly unnecessary for my purposes, so I politely nod and keep on walkin'.

In a recent O’Reilly interview, Stewart Butterfield, CEO of the all-knowing, all-powerful Flickr, says this about their API…

“On the strictly practical side, I think we had one person inquire about using the SOAP version of the API. I don’t know if any apps were actually built. There is at least one application built on XML-RPC. But all the others—I don’t even know how many there are—are built on the REST API. It’s just so easy to develop that way; I think it’s foolish to do anything else.”

Seems I’m not alone.