Sorry, this questions sounds silly, but after developing some of my RESTful services using Jersey, I asked myself the question -- If REST is just an architecture, and not a protocol like SOAP, why do we need a specification like JAX-RS?
I actually googled for questions like "What is the difference between servlets and RESTful services over HTTP" and to sum up the community answers, I got:
According to these answers, I guess if I write a servlet which uses JAXB (for dealing with automatic serialization), and I efficiently use GET/POST/PUT/DELETE in my servlet code, I don't use a tool like Jersey, and hence JAX-RS.
I know I am terribly wrong passing this statement, please correct me.
PS: This doubt actually came in when I had to develop some RESTful services in PHP. After going on through some of the RESTful PHP codes, I realized they are just the same old PHP scripts, with some helper methods for handling XML/JSON.
Why use JAX-RS / Jersey?
Short Answer
Because it makes the development of RESTful services easier.
Long Answer
JAX-RS is a standard that makes it easy to create a RESTful service that can be deployed to any Java application server: GlassFish, WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss, etc.
JAX-RS is part of Java EE, and when JAX-RS is used with other Java EE technologies it becomes even easier to create your RESTful service:
Sample JAX-RS Service
package org.example;
import java.util.List;
import javax.ejb.*;
import javax.persistence.*;
import javax.ws.rs.*;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
@Stateless
@LocalBean
@Path("/customers")
public class CustomerService {
@PersistenceContext(unitName="CustomerService",
type=PersistenceContextType.TRANSACTION)
EntityManager entityManager;
@POST
@Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)
public void create(Customer customer) {
entityManager.persist(customer);
}
@GET
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)
@Path("{id}")
public Customer read(@PathParam("id") long id) {
return entityManager.find(Customer.class, id);
}
@PUT
@Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)
public void update(Customer customer) {
entityManager.merge(customer);
}
@DELETE
@Path("{id}")
public void delete(@PathParam("id") long id) {
Customer customer = read(id);
if(null != customer) {
entityManager.remove(customer);
}
}
@GET
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)
@Path("findCustomersByCity/{city}")
public List<Customer> findCustomersByCity(@PathParam("city") String city) {
Query query = entityManager.createNamedQuery("findCustomersByCity");
query.setParameter("city", city);
return query.getResultList();
}
}
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