RESTful Web Services Tutorial

RESTful Web Services are basically REST Architecture based Web

Services. In REST Architecture everything is a resource. RESTful web
services are light weight, highly scalable and maintainable and are very
commonly used to create APIs for web-based applications. This tutorial will
teach you the basics of RESTful Web Services and contains chapters
discussing all the basic components of RESTful Web Services with suitable
examples.

Audience
This tutorial is designed for Software Professionals who are willing to learn
RESTful Web Services in simple and easy steps. This tutorial will give you
great understanding on RESTful Web Services concepts and after
completing this tutorial you will be at intermediate level of expertise from
where you can take yourself at higher level of expertise.

Prerequisites
Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic
understanding of Java Language, Text Editor, etc. Because we are going
to develop web services applications using RESTful, so it will be good if
you have understanding on other web technologies like HTML, CSS, AJAX,
etc.

RESTful Web Services - Introduction

What is REST architecture?

REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer. REST is web standards
based architecture and uses HTTP Protocol. It revolves around resource
where every component is a resource and a resource is accessed by a
common interface using HTTP standard methods. REST was first
introduced by Roy Fielding in 2000.
In REST architecture, a REST Server simply provides access to resources
and REST client accesses and modifies the resources. Here each resource
is identified by URIs/ global IDs. REST uses various representation to
represent a resource like text, JSON, XML. JSON is the most popular one.

HTTP methods
Following four HTTP methods are commonly used in REST based
architecture.

 GET − Provides a read only access to a resource.

 POST − Used to create a new resource.

 DELETE − Used to remove a resource.

 PUT − Used to update a existing resource or create a new resource.

Introduction to RESTFul web services

A web service is a collection of open protocols and standards used for
exchanging data between applications or systems. Software applications
written in various programming languages and running on various
platforms can use web services to exchange data over computer networks
like the Internet in a manner similar to inter-process communication on a
single computer. This interoperability (e.g., between Java and Python, or
Windows and Linux applications) is due to the use of open standards.

Web services based on REST Architecture are known as RESTful web

services. These webservices uses HTTP methods to implement the concept
of REST architecture. A RESTful web service usually defines a URI, Uniform
Resource Identifier a service, provides resource representation such as
JSON and set of HTTP Methods.

Creating RESTFul Webservice

In next chapters, we'll create a webservice say user management with
following functionalities −

Sr.No. URI HTTP POST Result

Method body

1 /UserService/users GET empty Show list

of all the
users.
 2 /UserService/addUser POST JSON Add
String details of
new user.

3 /UserService/getUser/:id GET empty Show

details of
a user.

RESTful Web Services - Environment

Setup

This tutorial will guide you on how to prepare a development environment

to start your work with Jersey Framework to create RESTful Web
Services. Jersey framework implements JAX-RS 2.0 API, which is a
standard specification to create RESTful Web Services. This tutorial will
also teach you how to setup JDK, Tomcat and Eclipse on your machine
before you the Jersey Framework is setup.

Setup Java Development Kit (JDK)

You can download the latest version of SDK from Oracle's Java site − Java
SE Downloads. You will find the instructions for installing JDK in the
downloaded files. Follow the given instructions to install and configure the
setup. Finally set the PATH and JAVA_HOME environment variables to
refer to the directory that contains Java and Javac, typically
java_install_dir/bin and java_install_dir respectively.

If you are running Windows and installed the JDK in C:\jdk1.7.0_75, you
would have to put the following line in your C:\autoexec.bat file.
set PATH = C:\jdk1.7.0_75\bin;%PATH%
set JAVA_HOME = C:\jdk1.7.0_75

Alternatively, on Windows NT/2000/XP, you could also right-click on My

Computer → select Properties → then Advanced → then Environment
Variables. Then, you would update the PATH value and press the OK
button.
On Unix (Solaris, Linux, etc.), if the SDK is installed in
/usr/local/jdk1.7.0_75 and you use the C Shell, you would put the
following into your .cshrc file.
setenv PATH /usr/local/jdk1.7.0_75/bin:$PATH
setenv JAVA_HOME /usr/local/jdk1.7.0_75

Alternatively, if you use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

like Borland JBuilder, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, or Sun ONE Studio, compile
and run a simple program to confirm that the IDE knows where you
installed Java, otherwise do proper setup as given document of the IDE.

Setup Eclipse IDE

All the examples in this tutorial have been written using the Eclipse IDE.
So, I would suggest you should have the latest version of Eclipse installed
on your machine.

To install Eclipse IDE, download the latest Eclipse binaries

from https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. Once you downloaded the
installation, unpack the binary distribution to a convenient location. For
example, in C:\eclipse on windows, or /usr/local/eclipse on Linux/Unix and
finally set the PATH variable appropriately.

Eclipse can be started by executing the following commands on a windows

machine, or you can simply double click on eclipse.exe.
%C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe

Eclipse can be started by executing the following commands on Unix

(Solaris, Linux, etc.) machine −
$/usr/local/eclipse/eclipse

After a successful startup, if everything is fine, then your screen should

display the following result −
Setup Jersey Framework Libraries
Now, if everything is fine, then you can proceed to setup the Jersey
framework. Following are a few simple steps to download and install the
framework on your machine.

 Make a choice whether you want to install Jersey on Windows, or Unix and
then proceed to the next step to download the .zip file for windows and then
the .tz file for Unix.

 Download the latest version of Jersey framework binaries from the following
link – https://jersey.java.net/download.html.

 At the time of writing this tutorial, I downloaded jaxrs-ri-2.17.zip on my

Windows machine and when you unzip the downloaded file it will give you the
directory structure inside E:\jaxrs-ri-2.17\jaxrs-ri as shown in the following
screenshot.
You will find all the Jersey libraries in the directories C:\jaxrs-ri-
2.17\jaxrs-ri\lib and dependencies in C:\jaxrs-ri-2.17\jaxrs-ri\ext.
Make sure you set your CLASSPATH variable on this directory properly
otherwise you will face problem while running your application. If you are
using Eclipse, then it is not required to set the CLASSPATH because all the
settings will be done through Eclipse.

Setup Apache Tomcat

You can download the latest version of Tomcat
from https://tomcat.apache.org/. Once you downloaded the installation,
unpack the binary distribution into a convenient location. For example in
C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.59 on windows, or /usr/local/apache-tomcat-
7.0.59 on Linux/Unix and set CATALINA_HOME environment variable
pointing to the installation locations.

Tomcat can be started by executing the following commands on a windows

machine, or you can simply double click on startup.bat.
%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\startup.bat

or
C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.59\bin\startup.bat

Tomcat can be started by executing the following commands on a Unix

(Solaris, Linux, etc.) machine −
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh

or
/usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.59/bin/startup.sh

After a successful startup, the default web applications included with

Tomcat will be available by visiting http://localhost:8080/. If
everything is fine then it should display the following result −
Further information about configuring and running Tomcat can be found in
the documentation included on this page. This information can also be
found on the Tomcat website − https://tomcat.apache.org.

Tomcat can be stopped by executing the following commands on a

windows machine −
%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\shutdown

or
C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.59\bin\shutdown

Tomcat can be stopped by executing the following commands on Unix

(Solaris, Linux, etc.) machine −
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh

or
/usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.59/bin/shutdown.sh

Once you are done with this last step, you are ready to proceed for your
first Jersey example which you will see in the next chapter.

RESTful Web Services - First

Application
Let us start writing the actual RESTful web services with Jersey
Framework. Before you start writing your first example using the Jersey
Framework, you have to make sure that you have setup your Jersey
environment properly as explained in the RESTful Web Services -
Environment Setup chapter. Here, I am also assuming that you have a
little working knowledge of Eclipse IDE.

So, let us proceed to write a simple Jersey Application which will expose a
web service method to display the list of users.

Creating a Java Project

The first step is to create a Dynamic Web Project using Eclipse IDE. Follow
the option File → New → Project and finally select the Dynamic Web
Project wizard from the wizard list. Now name your project
as UserManagement using the wizard window as shown in the following
screenshot −
Once your project is created successfully, you will have the following
content in your Project Explorer −
Adding the Required Libraries
As a second step let us add Jersey Framework and its dependencies
(libraries) in our project. Copy all jars from following directories of
download jersey zip folder in WEB-INF/lib directory of the project.

 \jaxrs-ri-2.17\jaxrs-ri\api

 \jaxrs-ri-2.17\jaxrs-ri\ext

 \jaxrs-ri-2.17\jaxrs-ri\lib

Now, right click on your project name UserManagement and then follow
the option available in context menu − Build Path → Configure Build
Path to display the Java Build Path window.

Now use Add JARs button available under Libraries tab to add the JARs
present in WEBINF/lib directory.
Creating the Source Files
Now let us create the actual source files under
the UserManagement project. First we need to create a package
called com.tutorialspoint. To do this, right click on src in package
explorer section and follow the option − New → Package.

Next we will create UserService.java, User.java,UserDao.java files

under the com.tutorialspoint package.

User.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.io.Serializable;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name = "user")

public class User implements Serializable {

private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

private int id;

private String name;

private String profession;

public User(){}

public User(int id, String name, String profession){

this.id = id;

this.name = name;

this.profession = profession;

public int getId() {

return id;

}
 @XmlElement

public void setId(int id) {

this.id = id;

public String getName() {

return name;

@XmlElement

public void setName(String name) {

this.name = name;

public String getProfession() {

return profession;

@XmlElement

public void setProfession(String profession) {

this.profession = profession;

UserDao.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.io.File;

import java.io.FileInputStream;

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

import java.io.FileOutputStream;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.io.ObjectInputStream;

import java.io.ObjectOutputStream;
import java.util.ArrayList;

import java.util.List;

public class UserDao {

public List<User> getAllUsers(){

List<User> userList = null;

try {

File file = new File("Users.dat");

if (!file.exists()) {

User user = new User(1, "Mahesh", "Teacher");

userList = new ArrayList<User>();

userList.add(user);

saveUserList(userList);

else{

FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);

ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(fis);

userList = (List<User>) ois.readObject();

ois.close();

} catch (IOException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

return userList;

private void saveUserList(List<User> userList){

try {
 File file = new File("Users.dat");

FileOutputStream fos;

fos = new FileOutputStream(file);

ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(fos);

oos.writeObject(userList);

oos.close();

} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

} catch (IOException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

UserService.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.util.List;

import javax.ws.rs.GET;

import javax.ws.rs.Path;

import javax.ws.rs.Produces;

import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;

@Path("/UserService")

public class UserService {

UserDao userDao = new UserDao();

@GET

@Path("/users")

@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)

public List<User> getUsers(){

 return userDao.getAllUsers();

There are two important points to be noted about the main program,

UserService.java
 The first step is to specify a path for the web service using @Path annotation
to the UserService.

 The second step is to specify a path for the particular web service method
using @Path annotation to method of UserService.

Creating the Web.xml configuration File

You need to create a Web xml Configuration file which is an XML file and
is used to specify Jersey framework servlet for our application.

web.xml

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>

<web-app xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xmlns = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"

xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee

http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"

id = "WebApp_ID" version = "3.0">

<display-name>User Management</display-name>

<servlet>

<servlet-name>Jersey RESTful Application</servlet-name>

<servlet-class>org.glassfish.jersey.servlet.ServletContainer</servlet-class>

<init-param>

<param-name>jersey.config.server.provider.packages</param-name>

<param-value>com.tutorialspoint</param-value>

</init-param>

</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>

<servlet-name>Jersey RESTful Application</servlet-name>

 <url-pattern>/rest/*</url-pattern>

</servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

Deploying the Program

Once you are done with creating source and web configuration files, you
are ready for this step which is compiling and running your program. To
do this, using Eclipse, export your application as a war file and deploy the
same in tomcat.

To create a WAR file using eclipse, follow the option File → export → Web
→ War File and finally select project UserManagement and destination
folder. To deploy a war file in Tomcat, place the UserManagement.war in
the Tomcat Installation Directory → webapps directory and start the
Tomcat.

Running the Program

We are using Postman, a Chrome extension, to test our webservices.

Make a request to UserManagement to get list of all the users. Put

http://localhost:8080/UserManagement/rest/UserService/users in
POSTMAN with GET request and see the following result.

Congratulations, you have created your first RESTful Application

successfully.